The Confederate
by Toasterman
Summary: It is the 41st millennium. The Imperium of Man is besieged on all sides by aliens, heretics and mutants. Mankind faces extinction. Its people pray for salvation. Heeding the call, the Emperor has sent...well, the best he could get on such short notice. Now ready for a ball-busting, chaos-purging second half!
1. Chapter 1: Entrance

In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, the Imperium of Man stands alone, besieged on all sides by daemons, aliens, heretics and mutants. For ten thousand years, the Emperor of Man has sat upon his Golden Throne, as the galaxy-spanning empire he crafted wages a ceaseless battle in his name.

Led by his will, vast armies of the Imperial Guard die by the billions, whole chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, plunge into hell, and the entirety of star systems are slaughtered. But even these great sacrifices cannot hold back the inevitable.

The Imperium's time left in the galaxy is short. Like the last few grains in an hourglass, it moves inexorably down the vortex into the forgotten realms of history. Here, in this blighted, hopeless future, mankind slowly perishes, praying for someone to pull it back from the brink.

And now through some divine twist of fate, that someone has arrived...

_The Confederate_

_Chapter One: Entrance_

Dancer VI's rotation had brought Thantos, one of the planet's five satellite hive cities, into the path of the system's twin stars. As the golden light of dawn reached the hive, passing between its tall spires and glancing off the stained glass windows of cathedrals, Thantos almost seemed peaceful. But as the light proceeded further in, toward the center of the upper levels in the area known as Emperor Square, the truth became more evident in the shattered marble statues, ruined stone buildings, and the stinking heaps of dead bodies.

Most of the dead were Imperial Guardsmen, slumped in the impact craters where they had spent the last moments of their lives fighting side by side, their flak armor holed by bullets, torn by axes and, in some cases, punctured by fangs. Lasguns still clutched in white-knuckled grips, the Guardsmen stared up into the smoke-streaked morning air.

The rest of the dead belonged to the Orks. The hated greenskins had made landfall on the arid badlands just three weeks ago and with little opposition from the planet's defense forces, took Thantos and its two sister hives, Hakantos and Tainatos, in a matter of days.

The 42nd Marathon Regiment of the Imperial Guard moved in the following week under orders from Segmentum command. Under the watchful gaze of Colonel Sergio Lementa, the regiment set to work fortifying the planetary capital Sakarnos Hive and the two remaining satellite hives, Argnos and Utnos, digging in and preparing for a hellish war of attrition against the Ork-held hives.

The Orks made the first move, moving across the badlands in a great horde toward Argnos hive. Colonel Lementa, having predicted this move, cut into the greenskins with a combination of long-range Basilisk artillery fire and a pre-set minefield. The Ork charge was destroyed, crushing their first major offensive in a wave of explosive judgment.

Feeling confident, Lementa ordered a full counterattack, choosing the nearest enemy hive, Thantos, as the target. The Guardsmen attacked en masse, pushing into the lower levels of the hive and moving up unopposed. Believing that the Orks had abandoned the city, the enthusiastic men emerged from the tunnels and into Emperor Square, right into the Orks' gun sights.

The ensuing firefight, like all great massacres, was over quickly. Lieutenant Menshaw, the officer put in charge of the attack, was cut down in the opening seconds of the attack. Shortly thereafter, the Guardsmen's morale cracked, reducing them to a broken shambles of confused maniacs firing in all directions, discipline abandoned in the face of such an ambush. And then they started to drop, the fight coming to an end as a Nob buried his chain axe in Commissar Zaitsov's head.

Private Dimitri Vlasna watched the big man fall, saw him hit the ground with blood leaking from his split head, and in fright hid himself beneath the piles of his dead comrades. He had stayed there, immobile, as the Orks moved through the dead, laughing and joking with each other in a foul mockery of low gothic. He stayed there as the man above him had his neck feasted upon by one of the aliens. He stayed there through the night, not daring to make a move.

When morning came, however, Dimitri pushed the bodies around him aside and got up on one knee. His flak armor was covered in dried blood from what had trickled down onto him during the night, and his cropped hair was caked with gore. Dimitri looked around, checking for any sign of enemy activity, before crawling to the edge of the pit he had called home for the last thirteen hours.

The stench of death pervaded the Square, staining everything it touched with an air of decay. The statue of the God-Emperor that occupied the center of the Square was still standing, the morning light revealing that even it wasn't above being stained by the combat, as evidenced by a great splash of red upon its noble marble face.

A half-dozen Orks were milling about on the opposite side of the Square, wrestling with each other, barking with glee as they took bites out of one another's hides. A Nob that Dimitri recognized as the same one who had murdered Commissar Zaitsov stood by, tusks bared in a feral grin as it watched the scuffle.

Dimitri grimaced and reached back into the pit. He pulled his lasgun up and checked its charge, finding it to be at half capacity. How much was really needed to kill one of those bastards? Dimitri didn't know, but he was surely about to find out. Zaitsov, given his position as company Commissar, wasn't the most popular of men, but that didn't make revenge any less of a goal. The fact that shooting the Nob was certain suicide didn't faze Dimitri in the least. Getting out of Thantos alive on his own was impossible, so he might as well die fighting, like a true Guardsman.

Without further ado, Dimitri forced out a long breath and centered the Nob's lumpy mug in his iron sights. He wrapped one gloved finger around the trigger and slowly squeezed back, drawing it nearer and nearer its release point.

There was a loud crack, followed by a bluish flash of energy. The statue of the Emperor exploded, showering Dimitri in specks of marble debris that banged against his flak armor. The Orks looked up from their scrimmage and, in time with Dimitri, spotted what was left on the statue base.

The figure was clothed in heavy white armor, similar to what Dimitri had seen the Adeptus Astartes of his home world wear into battle. The warrior carried a machinegun of sorts in one hand, its long form dwarfing that of any handheld weapon Dimitri had ever seen. But what struck him as oddest of all was the figure's visor: a polarized dome that reflected all the destruction around it, as if to serve as a mirror through which observers saw the naked truth of the world as judged by this white avenger.

The warrior held up the hand that wasn't holding its massive machinegun and waved to Dimitri. "Hey there!" it called, voice crackling through speakers on its armor, "How're you doing?"

So shocking was the arrival of this warrior in white that Dimitri forgot about shooting the Nob. The Orks, however, were not so stunned and had didn't hold back from shooting at the newcomer.

Stubber bullets smacked into the marble base and smacked against the figure's white armor, glancing off and careening into the cobblestone floor of the Square.

"Ow!" the newcomer yelped, turning to look at the Orks, its weapon coming up to fire, "You sons of bitches!"

The long machinegun went off with a report more akin to a prolonged explosion than the sound of gunshots. The muzzle flash stretching a foot out of the barrel, the weapon mowed the Orks down in a pinpoint hail of fire. Scrap metal armor broke into pieces and blood flowed as the half-dozen greenskins were ripped apart, ragtag firearms going by the wayside.

The Nob, having survived the barrage by taking cover behind a chunk of stone, rushed the statue base, chain axe held high above its head. As it drew near, the newcomer tossed its weapon to the side and met it in a roaring tackle. Both combatants rolled to the body strewn ground. The Nob buried its chain axe in a crux between the newcomer's neck and right shoulder pauldron, teeth sparking against steel as it failed to get a bite in edgewise.

The newcomer landed a brutal punch to the Nob's forehead, forcing its head into the cobblestone. It grabbed the Nob by the mouth and slammed its head into the ground again and again, dashing the alien's brains out of its head. The Nob growled and tried to bite the hand in its mouth, but ended up breaking its teeth against the armor. Three more whacks and the Nob stopped fighting, its body going still aside from a few residual nerve twitches.

The newcomer got to its feet and picked its rifle back up, a sigh escaping from its speakers. "Whew, that feller was a tough one. Ain't never fought anything like that before," it looked over at Dimitri, "Hey you! Can you tell me where I am?"

Dimitri hesitantly stood from the pit and started forward, holding his lasgun at the ready just in case this newcomer turned out to be a hostile. Not that he harbored a prayer of beating such a warrior in combat, having seen the fate of the Nob. "You are in Thantos Hive, Dancer VI, and Ultima Segmentum."

The newcomer cocked its head to one side in clear confusion. Dimitri opened his mouth to repeat himself, but was silenced by a dismissive wave of the hand. "Don't worry about it, partner. Don't matter much one way or the other. Place still ain't safe, I reckon."

"Yes," Dimitri agreed, picking up on the stranger's meaning despite the odd phrasing, "We are still surrounded by Orks."

"Orks? Oh, those things." The newcomer glanced to the Nob at its feet. "How many, you think?"

"Thousands," Dimitri answered.

The newcomer didn't seem troubled by that. "You got buddies around these parts?"

Dimitri nodded. "Back in Argnos, yes."

"Uh, okay. You know the way to get back there?"

"Yes, Astartes."

The newcomer stared at Dimitri from behind its reflective dome. After a moment, the visor peeled back, letting out a billowing cloud of smoke that cleared to reveal a frowning, low-browed face. "Did you just call me an assturd?"

"No, no, no! I called you _Astartes_. That is what you are, right? An Adeptus Astartes?" Dimitri saw the newcomer's face become confused. "A Space Marine?"

"Oh! A marine! Yeah, I'm a marine." The newcomer's face brightened to a smile and he extended an armored hand to Dimitri. "Sergeant Fred Jax, Confederate Marine Corp, former Alpha Squadron."

Somehow, Dimitri doubted that this man with his odd white armor, powerful spike-throwing weapon and strange accent was cut from the same cloth as the Ultramarines and their kin. Despite this, he did seem to be friendly, and in the interests of self-preservation amid the Ork-held hive, Dimitri shook with the marine in front of him and introduced himself.

"Private Dimitri Vlasna, 42nd Marathon Infantry Regiment, Imperial Guard."

"Nice meeting you, Dimitri," Jax said, "Now, what do you say we get the hell out of this, um…"

"Hive."

"Yeah, that."


	2. Chapter 2: Orks, Issues, and Assturds

Jax felt a hot spike of pain as the Slaughterlisk tore his spine open. The pain quickly subsided, however, and he fell forward, no longer able to feel his limbs. Someone caught him inches from the cold bunker floor and rolled him over to where Jax found himself staring up into the face of his closest friend.

"Jax-" the Reaper started, his eyes showing for perhaps the first time true concern.

"Nick, Nick, we were friends, right?" Jax asked, hearing his own voice crack, "I mean, you weren't just saying that, were you?"

"No Jax."

Internally, Jax let out a sigh. "I was wondering. Because, sometimes it seemed like you were making fun of me, and I thou-"

Nick's eyes lost their concern, replaced with an irritating glare. "Jax, shut up." Apparently, bleeding to death still wasn't a good enough excuse to talk for longer than thirty seconds.

"Thank you," Jax said, struggling to get the words out through his numb trachea and failing lungs, "Thank you."

His vision narrowed, blackness encroaching from the corners of his sight, phasing out Nick's face. Jax panicked, realizing that death had finally reached him and that there was now no way out, no where to run and no enemy to shoot. He tried to scream, but his mouth wouldn't work, his lungs having betrayed him.

Then a voice reached him from beyond his normal range of perception, linking its mind to his and reassuring him. "This is not your fate," it said, the words washing across the smoothed parts of Jax's mind like a warm creek over the stone bed, "Though you leave this world, you shall be born anew in due time. But until then, my son, rest well. You have earned it."

Jax smiled to himself, his last thoughts filled with the warmth of a father's embrace as he slipped slowly into the dark.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 2: Orks, Issues, and Assturds_

Dimitri poked his head around the building's corner, careful to keep himself low to the ground. They were about six miles outside of Emperor Square, moving through the open-aired center of the Thantos hive city. By sticking to the shadows, Dimitri and his newly found ally had managed to avoid several Ork patrols, though it was only a matter of time before they would be forced to engage the aliens in open combat.

Across the street from his position Dimitri spotted a library, its front steps streaked by trails of dried crimson. Orks milled around the front door, shifting impatiently from foot to foot. Dimitri tried to take a quick count of the aliens' numbers, but gave up after they started punching each other. It was as if the bastards couldn't go a moment without fighting.

"Psst!" Jax whispered, "What's going on up there?"

Dimitri looked back over his shoulder. Even crouched as he was against the stone wall the big marine couldn't help but stand out. "Orks. They seem to be waiting for something."

"Should we take 'em out?"

"If we want to get out of the city, yes," Dimitri replied, "One of the primary extraction routes planned for my platoon was in that library."

Jax checked an ammo counter on the side of his 'Impaler'. "How many you reckon there are?"

Dimitri looked back to the Orks, trying again to count them. "I can't be sure. Maybe around twenty."

"Gotcha," Jax said. He started forward, but stopped mid-step. "Hey Dimitri, that's the one with the two and then the zero, right?"

"Yes."

Jax looked down at his ammo counter again, then counted out something on his right fingers. After a moment, he looked up at Dimitri and smiled. "I've got enough. Any of them bigger ones?"

"Nobs?" Dimitri asked, "No, I don't see any."

"Good. Wait here, buddy." Without waiting for a reply, Jax dashed past Dimitri and into the street. "Shout if you see anything!"

The nearest Ork took a burst of spikes in the back of the head, popping it like a blood-filled watermelon. The rest of the Orks spun around at the sudden outburst of gunfire. Rusted cudgels and crude firearms were brought to bear, the latter snapping of quick shots at the oncoming marine. The bullets were poorly aimed and too slow to penetrate Jax's thick armor, and he continued on into the midst of the Ork pack.

During one of his first major engagements after basic training, Dimitri witnessed a Leman Russ tank smash into a squad of Traitor Marines at full speed and all weapons blazing. The result had been devastating with the tank crushing the majority under its treads and the remainder vanishing in a column of fire from its main gun.

Jax reminded him of that tank as he smashed into the group of Orks, his armored body knocking them aside. He drove his free fist into a face, breaking bone and pulping brain, at the same time pumping spikes into another Ork's chest.

The greenskins roared in delight at the prospect of such a fight and hurled themselves at Jax. He vanished under the weight of the writhing dog pile, covered in a sea of slobbering maws and spiky armor.

Dimitri leveled his lasgun with the mob and fired again and again, burning holes in the backs of several aliens. Some tumbled down the pile, screaming, but the mob didn't seem to care. Eventually Dimitri stopped firing, convinced that no man could survive under that much brute force.

A roar grated against his ears, emanating from deep within the pile, followed quickly by a ripping of Impaler fire. Spikes blasted out of the top of the mound, carrying with them a smattering of stringy organs. More spikes burst from the pile in different places, each followed by an Ork corpse as its teammates discarded it in favor of getting closer to their foe.

At the center of the carnage, Jax punched and fired again and again, killing with abandon in vicious hand-to-hand combat. Thick Ork blood washed across his armor and clouded his visor, but he ignored it. Reaching out, he found purchase on a shoulder pad and pulled himself upright, forcing aside the Orks above him with a stream of 8mm steel.

Dimitri watched the pile shift and buckle with Jax's movement, the Orks trying to find better paths of attack against the bulky marine. He resumed firing, drilling pinpoint holes into glimpses of exposed green flesh.

Jax wrenched an axe free from a grubby green fist, flipped it around and buried it between his opponent's eyes. The Ork groaned in pain and toppled, quickly replaced by another of its slobbering kin. Jax fired at point blank range, turning the Ork's face to mush. Holding down on the trigger, Jax worked his weapon back and forth through the horde, scything down a swath of aliens and making a hole in the formation.

With a strained grunt of effort, Jax pushed himself out of the group and onto the street before turning and squeezing his Impaler's secondary trigger. A rocket shot forth from the underslung launcher, streaked into the open hole and detonated at the heart of the tumble, erupting in a terrific explosion.

Dimitri watched the Orks fly back from the epicenter of the blast. Severed limbs and tattered strips of flesh and armor smacked against the wall next to his head, bringing with them buckets of soupy entrails coated in slick red blood. He lowered his lasgun and looked to Jax, his eyes wide. He hadn't expected the Confederate to pull through, much less unscathed as he was.

Jax pulled his visor back and grinned, a strangely innocent expression that Dimitri was fast getting used to. "Clear!" he proclaimed, reloading his rifle with a casual fluidity of motion, "You wanna lead the way, Dimitri?"

Dimitri got to his feet. He was just beginning to come to grips with the destruction this Jax had wrought when the biggest Nob he had ever seen in his life emerged from the library's front door.

The creature was massive, a walking slab of rippling muscle barely contained beneath its mossy skin. Its tusks were each a foot and a half long. Mucus-like spittle dripped from its gaping maw, and as it threw back its head to let out a war cry, the skulls dangling around its neck swayed in a display of barbaric intimidation.

"Jax, behind you!" Dimitri shouted, his lasgun pointing for him.

Jax whirled around, bolt snapping forward on his Impaler, and squeezed off a long burst. The full complement of his fresh magazine ripped into the Nob, all five hundred steel spikes imbedding themselves in its chest, splitting the decorative skulls and splintering its armor. The alien's war cry turned into a moan of anguish and when the firing stopped, it simply slumped over and slid down the library's stairs.

Jax dropped his second spent clip and reloaded again, humming to himself all the while. He completed the process and started up into the library, disappearing into the darkened interior. "Now, on we go!" Dimitri heard him say, followed shortly thereafter by another crack of gunfire and yelp of pain from an Ork.

Fearing the prospect of being left alone in the overrun hive, Dimitri hurried after the Confederate.

* * *

With Dimitri on point, the duo made their way through the bowels of Thantos Hive. For the most part they were able to avoid the aliens that seemed to be multiplying like rodents in the tunnels. In the few cases where they had been forced to engage the enemy, either real Orks or their diminutive Gretchin slaves, they had prevailed thanks to Jax's tendency to blanket entire sections of tunnel in devastating spike barrages.

After a good three hours of alternating between creeping stealth movements and fast-paced murder sprees, the two soldiers made it out of the towering super city and onto the sands of the inter-hive badlands.

Once they had crawled for ten miles to avoid being spotted from the upper levels, Dimitri stood up from the scorched-white sand and brushed himself off. "I think we're far enough out. There isn't a chance of those beasts spotting us with their artillery now."

"You sure?"

Dimitri slung his lasgun over his shoulder and stretched, having not done so throughout the entire journey. "Yes."

"Okay." Jax jerked upright and shook himself, the armored plates that covered him throwing off sheets of billowing sand. He opened his visor and let out a series of grains that had accumulated within his helmet during the crawl. That was a testament to either A) how seriously he took camouflage or B) how ignorant he was of the transparent blast plate right in front of his face. "Now, where's this Argnos place you were talkin' about?"

"Over there," Dimitri said. He pointed out across the badlands to another hive, its spires stretching up into the drought-plagued sky. "The rest of my regiment is there, heavily fortified against these vermin."

"Oh, now come on," Jax said, bracing his Impaler behind his head and over both shoulders. "These Orks may be a little rough around the edges, but you don't have to go around callin' them mean things, especially when they ain't even here to defend themselves."

Dimitri stared at Jax, unbelieving of what he just heard. "Excuse me, but were you there when we fought our way out of that hive?"

"Yup."

"So you saw that all those creatures do is fight, eat, and die? Right?"

"Yup."

"So, then, after seeing that, can you not agree that they are insufferable vermin unfit to live in this galaxy?"

"No, I can't," Jax said, "Just because all they ever do is fight, eat and die doesn't mean that they're bad people. They just follow their dreams a little better than you or me."

"Bad people? They are aliens!" Dimitri shouted, "You cannot show them sympathy; doing such is heresy!"

Jax frowned, but his body stayed relaxed. "Now slow down there, Dimitri. I didn't say anything about sympathizin' with the fellers. I'm all for killin' 'em, but I don't think you ought to badmouth 'em." The big marine started walking, passing Dimitri on his way toward the far off Argnos hive city. "You gotta show respect for your enemy, you know?"

Dimitri stepped into line behind Jax, his flak armor suddenly feeling much too heavy on his shoulders. On his homeworld of Marathon he had been privileged several times by the presence of the Adeptus Astartes, due to the world's close proximity to the fortress monastery of the Sons of Marathon Chapter. They all acted alike, speaking in booming voices and walking with a purpose of step unrivaled by mere men.

But the man in front of him now, the one who called himself Fred Jax, wasn't like any of those Angels of Death.

His voice didn't boom, but rather ambled along in a casual, unhurried saunter not unlike his physical gait. He didn't seem worried by anything around him and wasn't distraught at the direness of their situation. In fact, he didn't even seem to acknowledge the surrounding problems. His armor was too neat, its plates too well-shaped, and his weaponry too brutal to be like those elite of the Imperium.

"Just what kind of Space Marine are you?" Dimitri asked the back of the man in front of him.

"Whatcha mean by that?" Jax replied, not bothering to turn around.

"What chapter are you with?"

Jax didn't respond for a moment. "I dunno," he said at last, "You know any good ones I could join?"

Dimitri, despite himself, laughed. "Jax, one does not simply join up with a chapter of the Adeptus Astartes!"

"You're always calling people names!" Jax said. He abruptly stopped and turned around, Dimitri running head-first into his chest armor. "Why don't you like anyone?"

"I do too like people!" Dimitri said, rubbing his now aching forehead, "And what do you mean calling people names? What names have I called people?"

Jax shifted his Impaler under one arm so that he could count things off on his fingers. "Well, let's see. You called those Orks vermin and beasts and xenos, which I'm positive isn't a nice thing to say, and now you're back to calling them marines assturds."

"Astartes! By the Throne, I said _Astartes_! It's High Gothic, damnit!" Dimitri shouted, "And so what if I call Orks names? They are the enemy!"

"Calm down, there, Dimitri. There ain't no need to start shouting."

Dimitri started to continue, but all at once two days of dehydration caught up with him. Stars burst across his vision and he fell to the ground, landing face-first in the hot sand. The last thing he saw before slipping into unconsciousness was Jax kneeling down next to him, Impaler falling by the wayside as he detached a white box from his combat belt.

* * *

Jax had never been very good at thinking things through. That's what the drill instructors at Camp Pendelton had told him during his time in basic training. 'No Fink Fred', they called him. Good for grunt work but not much else was the consensus amongst his teachers, and it was meant as a compliment.

He was good at all things expected of a marine. Digging trenches, shooting targets, stripping rifles, using his armor, repairing his armor, dropping from orbit, marching in parades, slaughtering protesting civilians, saluting with all fingers straight, calling in airstrikes, manning bunkers, walking patrol, saying sir in the right places, covering tanks, moving supplies, patching up basic wounds and breeching doors.

The one area he excelled in above all else, however, was hand-to-hand combat. Blessed with the standard training skills given to him, a history in street fights and a natural berserker tendency to tap into, Jax's ability was quickly noticed and even more quickly utilized by his various commanders.

Low on ammo but still need to take the bunker? Get Jax. Close range combat with zerglings? Get Jax. Ambush set up to steal Kel-Morian siege tank? Get Jax. Enemy ghost infiltrated bridge and holding captain hostage? Get Jax. First Squad's sergeant finally snap and go AWOL? Have Jax retrieve him. If it required hand-to-hand capabilities, Jax was the go-too guy. 'Two Fists Fred', they called him in Alpha Squadron.

He was not resocced, though during his career he had come to realize that many of his peers automatically assumed he was. Jax considered that to be a good thing, as some of the best marines in history had been resocced, and had never bothered to correct them. He focused fully on his duties as a marine, and during his time had advanced up to the rank of staff sergeant, convinced that was as far as his tactical brain would allow him to get.

Jax looked up into the bland sky above the badlands and thought about everything that had led him here. He was keeping watch in the bunker on Tarsonis as the Zerg attacked. He put a spike in one of the bastards, but they took him prisoner and led him down into the depths of the facility where he was then executed in front of his teammates. Then he died and woke up on top of that pedestal in Emperor Square, his Impaler in hand and armor repaired.

Then he started fighting, and by the last count of his suit's onboard computer had killed eighty seven Orks in the sporadic gunfights as he made his way out of the hive, thanks to his newfound ally.

Jax looked over at Dimitri where he had stashed the private's comatose body beneath the shade of a small desert shrub, the only piece of cover he could find in the entire desert. He liked Dimitri, and knew that despite all his little outbursts about heresy and assturds and whatnot, the kid meant well. And besides, in the weird world Jax now found himself, Dimitri was the only person who hadn't tried to kill him. He supposed that counted for something.

Presently, Dimitri was coming around. It seemed like the cocktail of wake-up stims Jax had pumped into his body was doing the trick. Score one for home-made recipes.

"What-" Dimitri stopped to cough up a wad of phlegm before continuing. "What happened?"

Jax shrugged. "Dehydration gotcha."

Dimitri wrapped his arms around his body. "Why do I feel cold?"

"Shivers, huh?" Jax chuckled, "That just means the stims are doin' their job. You'll be okay. C'mon, let's get rollin'." He started to walk off, but stopped himself when Dimitri didn't move. "Somethin' wrong, partner?"

The private stared at the ground between his folded legs, not meeting Jax's gaze as he responded. "Why did you save me?"

"Huh?"

"I said, why did you save me?" Dimitri asked, looking up at Jax, "It doesn't make sense. You're a Space Marine, one of the Emperor's finest. I'm just a Guardsman. I serve no purpose. Why didn't you just leave me here?"

Jax didn't really know what to say to that. It was just something that soldiers did, they watched out for each other. But maybe Dimitri never made a lot of friends and didn't get that and needed some explaining. Jax didn't doubt it. The guy could be a little bitch sometimes.

"Dimitri, we're buddies, and buddies don't leave each other dying out in a desert," he explained as best he could. Jax held out a hand to the comparatively smaller Guardsman. "Now come on. We've gotta keep moving."

Dimitri hesitated for a second, measuring Jax's words. None of what he had seen of the man so far bespoke of anything more than good intentions, and although he was now convinced that Jax was not a Space Marine in the traditional sense, and possibly not even from the Imperium, he didn't think of that as a bad thing. After all, an Astartes, and the majority of his fellow Guardsmen, would have just left him to die.

He grabbed Jax's hand and was roughly pulled to his feet. Once standing, Dimitri checked his lasgun's charge and looked out at Argnos hive out in the distance. "We're about forty miles out. The recon flights should pick us up once we're closer, though. So I'd wager that at least half of that'll be spent in the back of a Chimera."

"What's a Chimera?" Jax asked, his words voicing more evidence to Dimitri's theory of him not being from the Imperium. The Guardsman made a silent vow to sit down and have a long conversation with Jax when he got the time.

"It's a transport," he answered, saying nothing of his personal thoughts.

"Oh."

* * *

After eleven miles, Dimitri's feet started to ache. He tried to ignore it by focusing on the march, but soon every step brought with it a stab of pain that jolted up his legs, topping out at his groin. The straps that secured his flak armor to his body were beginning to rub his shoulders raw, and he had begun to debate shedding the heat-conducting sheets of steel as he walked.

Jax, on the other hand, seemed quite comfortable. His power armor did most of the work for him as he breezed across the landscape, each step just as powerful as the last. His Impaler, destructive slaughter tool that it was, was clamped across his back on a magnetic plate. Even slung the weapon was frightening to behold, its stamped, undecorated design a sharp contrast to the Astartes Bolter, the only other weapon Dimitri could compare it with.

The rhythmic crunch of boots on hard packed sand was the only sound, occasionally interspaced with a sigh from Jax or a cough from Dimitri.

After another mile, Jax spoke up. "Hey, you wanna hear some music?"

"Erm, okay," Dimitri said, unsure of how to respond. He didn't even know how Jax intended to play music all the way out here, but…

His thoughts were interrupted by a burst of static from Jax's suit, followed by a wailing noise like a daemon's screech as it was bashed against a brick wall. A series of heavy thumps punctuated the wail, then increased in frequency until the entire thing became a cacophony of noise that grated against Dimitri's ears.

A voice, tortured and angry, broke into the racket, shouting something that verged on incoherent. To Dimitri's ears it sounded like something from the deepest pits of hell, like the chaotic battle litanies that the Red Corsairs Traitor Marines blared over the vox channels as they raided cities and raped civilians. It was not a sound that any good, Emperor-fearing person should listen to, and if he had listened to such a thing back home on Marathon, he would surely have suffered at the hand of the local priest.

"What _is_ this?"

Jax turned and looked at him. "Huh?"

"What is this?" Dimitri shouted over the music.

"Rock 'n roll!" came the answer, "Whatcha think?"

Dimitri heard the phrase come up in the song, screamed by whoever was singing. It was a far cry from the hymnals he sang in the regiment's chapel, but he supposed that was alright. The violence inherent in this rock 'n roll seemed more appropriate to the life of a soldier than any hymnal, and Dimitri appreciated that. It seemed as though Jax was onto something here.

"It's good!"

Jax smiled. "Hell yeah it is!"

Strangely enough, the music repeated that as well. The lyrics seemed to just alternate between shouts of 'rock and roll' and 'hell yeah' for much of the song, but Dimitri didn't mind the simplicity. After all, it had been explained to him at length that complexity bred heresy.

And thus they marched on, disrupting the peaceful badlands. Dimitri quickly forgot about his pained feet. In fact, the Guardsman soon noticed himself adding a bit of a bounce to his step. Soon they would be back safe and sound in Argnos, amongst the Emperor's people and far away from the Orks.

They would be welcomed as heroes.

* * *

A thick energy beam smacked into the sand just to the left of Dimitri's boot, accompanied by the lasting report of a long-las sniper rifle. He stopped instantly, looking up at the vast hive in front of him. Jax stopped, too, shutting off the music and whipping his Impaler up into place.

"What the hell is going on?" he asked, "I thought this was your boys' place."

"That it is," Dimitri replied, wondering a similar thing himself.

A voice drifted out across the sands, carried on the wind by a loudspeaker. "Halt! Identify yourselves!"

Before Dimitri could respond, Jax was already shouting. "Oh yeah? How 'bout you identify _your_self!"

Dimitri lowered his head, cursing himself for his optimism. "Some heroes' welcome."

**Author's Note: Next chapter we'll get away from such a Dimitri and Jax based perspective and explore some other characters who get to interact with the Confederate. I felt as though I had to alert you to that, because these first two chapters are very focused on one relationship, but it needed to be done. They are the two main characters, after all.**

**Also, at this point in the story anything can happen to these two. The entire expanse of Warhammer is laid before them, with all its possibilities and plotlines. There's just so much to choose from! Space Marines, the Inquisition, Chaos, the Traitor Legions, Necrons, Tau, Tyranids...all of it! From here I can literally do _anything _with these two characters. It's a rare occurance in my time as a writer that I am presented with such a variety of choices. There's no telling where this could go, but you can be damn sure that go it will, probably for well beyond a few hundred thousand words. **

**Yessir, we're in for the long haul. So start making suggestions. Your input is wanted just as badly as your opinion of what's happened so far. Drop a review.**


	3. Chapter 3: Mingling

_"The Orks plague the galaxy from the end to end with their ceaseless warring and strife. They are a race rooted so deeply in war that peace is utterly incomprehensible to them. I pray with all my faith that some great catastrophe will annihilate them but I fear that ultimately it is they, not we, who shall rule the galaxy." _

_-Xanthius, High Lord of Terra_

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 3: Mingling  
_

Silence pervaded the badlands in the aftermath of the initial laser discharge and accompanying order to halt. Neither Jax nor Dimitri moved as they waited for another shout from the vox-caster, and the longer they waited the more and more convinced Dimitri became that their fate would be ended in a single Basilisk shell.

During his planning for their arrival at Argnos Hive, he had forgotten something that in hindsight seemed obvious. Though he had seen Jax's arrival with his own two eyes and knew enough of the man to deem him an ally, to any other Guardsman he would appear as an odd shape on the horizon; an unknown factor, easier to be eliminated than dealt with.

"What's goin' on?" Jax asked, his Impaler still leveled with an enemy too far off to spot.

Dimitri shrugged, resigned to whatever fate was about to fall upon him. "Not sure. They either think we're traitors or the luckiest bastards alive. Either way, they're probably going to blast us all over the sand."

* * *

Half a mile away in a muddy trench line that ran the perimeter of Argnos Hive, Lieutenant Ivan Rakatev sighed. "Those two are either traitors or the luckiest bastards alive." He turned to the stubby Ratling next to him and gestured out at the duo. "They do anything yet?"

Menshaw shook his misshapen head, not bothering to take his gaze away from his rifle's scope. "No. The big one's still aiming at us, and the tiny one's just standing there."

Rakatev took off his helmet to scratch his scalp, wondering just what in the Emperor's name he was supposed to do.

Colonel Lementa had given Rakatev's fifth company the task of fortifying the outer defenses, augmenting him with an additional two platoons of PDF troops to shore up the slack. With that many men and the backing of artillery fire from the main hive, Rakatev was sure that he could hold back a good sized horde of Orks, but in matters such as this he was lost.

Killing them would be easy. The coordinates to their position were written down right in front of him on his clipboard, just waiting to be relayed to the Basilisk crews. They were probably itching to cook off a salvo, having not shelled a thing since the greenskin recon force at dawn.

He would have done it, too, were it not for the fact that there was a Guardsman out there. Losing comrades in battle was one thing, but Rakatev couldn't kill one in cold blood. He didn't have the stomach for it. After all, he was no commissar.

He would much rather have just talked to the two men, but with the big one's weapon still aiming in the trenchline's direction, it was impossible. The weapon looked formidable and its user, with its polarized visor and bulky white armor, seemed less inclined to diplomacy than the Orks.

"Gak it," he muttered, then looked to Menshaw again, "If the big one lowers its gun in the next two minutes, let me know. If not, we're shelling them."

* * *

Jax's visor magnified the area in front of him twelve times, bringing the trench into detailed focus. His HUD ticked off the contacts in the trench and their weapons, conferring with his suit's computer and coming up with a threat analysis that included several unknown factors.

The most immediate threat was the midget with the sniper rifle, so Jax brought his armor into sharpshooter mode. His leg servos locked into place with a thunk and control of his arms was transferred to the targeting subroutines. The computer moved his arms in calculated, deliberate motions, taking into consideration the finest of factors to ensure a successful, pinpoint execution shot.

The process was much too slow for closer ranged affairs, but in this situation, where no human would be able to make such a shot with an Impaler, it worked perfectly.

After a moment, his HUD blinked green and gave him the fire signal. Jax rested his finger on the trigger, ready to send the midget to his death. Following the shot, he figured on taking his chances with a head-first charge. He would probably die, but at this point, his narrow-minded perspective hadn't presented him with another option.

Dimitri stood next to him, weapon still slung over his shoulder. The young Guardsman's eyes flickered back and forth, thoughts racing through his head as he broke down what could be going through the head of the line commander. All at once, it hit him, and he looked over at Jax.

"Jax, you've got to lower your gun!" he said.

Jax looked sideways at Dimitri. "But didn't you say they were gonna blast us all over the sand?"

"Yes, but only because they think you're a threat. Lower your gun and they'll call off the guns."

Jax, his face unreadable behind the polarized visor, hesitated for a moment. Then his armor hissed, thunked and his arms lowered, taking his Impaler's aim with them. "Done."

Dimitri let out a breath he'd been unconsciously holding. "Good. Now with any luck they won't have to kill us."

* * *

Menshaw blinked in surprise. "Sir, the big one lowered its gun."

"Really? Good. Now we won't have to kill them." Rakatev smiled and grabbed the vox receiver off the pack his aide, Corporal Lang, was lugging around. "Patch me through to Sergeant Sakarov. We've got to get those men clearance through the kill zone."

"Yes sir," Lang replied, working the knobs on the switchboard attached to his forearm.

* * *

"Okay, we're going to let you through the kill zone," the loudspeaker announced, "Come forward with your weapons slung."

Dimitri relaxed his bunched muscles and looked to Jax. The Confederate clamped his Impaler to his back and let out a yawn, as if the tenseness of a moment ago hadn't happened. Dimitri, who had been near wetting himself at the prospect of dying, envied his the big marine.

"Lead the way," Jax said.

Dimitri shook his head. "Not yet. Jax, you must understand something before we go any further."

"Okie-dokie."

"These people aren't all like me. They may not be so accepting of your, um, quirks. Just do me a favor by keeping your comments to yourself and letting me do most of the talking. If you do that, I think I can get us through this."

"No problem-o, Senor Dimitri," Jax said, giving a jesting salute to his friend, "They used to call me No Clap Jax on account of how quiet I could be."

"Really?" Dimitri asked.

"Nah, not once," Jax admitted, "Kinda wish they had, though. I always thought it was a pretty nifty nickname myself."

Dimitri thought about retorting for a second, decided it would have been a lost cause, and started toward the trench. As Jax fell in behind him, the Guardsman found himself praying for protection for what seemed like the eightieth time since the assault of Thantos and wondering just how long it would take before the Emperor grew tired of saving him.

* * *

Colonel Sergio Lementa's headquarters was located in Dancer VI's planetary capital at Sakarnos Hive. In the highest spire of the entire city, the governor's quarters seemed the ideal spot, giving a good view of the surrounding badlands through the large, gothic windows. From this vantage point, Lementa could keep an actual eye on the two nearest Hives, Utnos right next door and Argnos situated further out on the horizon.

The room around him, formerly the governor's office, looked like the place where the enemies originally made planet fall. Earlier in the morning, a deep strike formation of Ork fighter bombers had strafed the spire, dropping off three squads of Ork drop troop kommandos in addition to their full compliment of explosives.

In the ensuing firefight, Lementa lost four of his best veteran Guardsmen escorts, his chief priest Father Valgadesh. Governor Williamson himself perished in the confusion along with much of his political staff, victims of an unfortunate friendly fire incident involving one of Commissar Yanavich's frag grenades rolling under the Governor's desk.

Afterwards, Lementa assumed full control over planetary affairs, issued relocation directives for the PDF and began the preliminary stages of culling soldiers from the civilian populous. Finally, he ordered the anti-air crews to return to their posts to prevent any other unfortunate turns of events.

Presently, two of Lementa's aides flipped a table back upright and unfurled a map across its surface. The map showed the layout of the continent all the other hives were built upon, including the few geographical marks that dotted the badlands between each super city.

"So, the attack on Thantos has failed," Lementa thought aloud, looking at said hive's position on the map, "What have the preliminary tactical analyses reported?"

Captain Kamarov, Lementa's senior tactical analyst, answered with words carefully read off a clipboard in his hand. "Not all the factors are in, but most of the feed from _St. Timov_ points to a mass ambush in the upper levels that cut down our troops. Expected survival rate is zero percent."

Lementa nodded in acceptance. "Then we must accept the loss of 7th Company. What knowledge of the enemy have we gleaned from this incident?"

This time, Junior Lieutenant Kissov spoke up. "The enemy's actions during the defense of Thantos Hive support our theory of their origins. An astropathic communication received from Segmentum command early this morning confirms it: these Orks are Warboss Thaz Narkull's Clan."

"Damn," Lementa spat. He knew Narkull's reputation, having been on Kunkles thirty years ago during the campaign to halt the Narkull's Waaagh! before it could get firmer footing. They had barely stopped him there, and even then it had taken the sacrifice of three full regiments, including Lementa's own 55th Mordian. He remembered those men fondly, and when measured side-by-side, they put this Marathon lot to shame.

He looked up from the map at Kissov and Kamarov. "Please tell me they're sending help."

"They are," Kamarov said, "Elements of the Sons of Marathon Space Marine Chapter's Third Company are en route. Apparently, they have a score to settle with Narkull."

"Thank the Emperor," Lementa breathed, "Some good news. From this moment on, our strategy changes to one of defense. Kissov, issue orders to move the armored company under Lieutenant Yevill up to Utnos Hive. I have a feeling that Narkull's next move will be a flanking maneuver to take it from us, and I want a bulwark of Imperial steel there to blunt the attack."

"Right away, sir," Kissov said before heading away to the table where his staff had set up the vox equipment.

Kamarov spoke up. "And another thing, Colonel. Our conscription of the local populous is progressing slower than expected. Three platoon sergeants have already died trying to tame these Hive-dwellers." The veteran paused, framing his thoughts. "They lack…discipline."

The Colonel grinned. "Well, one cannot expect them to change overnight. Molding them into meat worthy of the grinder is a delicate process." Lementa turned to the red-coated hulk of a man across the table from him. "Yanavich, you will personally take over the conscription and training of these locals."

The Commissar nodded. "They will fear the guns of our foes, but Emperor willing, they'll fear me more."

Lementa watched Yanavich go, his cape flowing behind him as he entered the lift. When he looked back to Kamarov, he found his old comrade staring at him.

The two men had served together for decades, and the familiarity between them allowed Kamarov to forgo honorifics as he spoke. "Sergio, it will be at least a week before the Astartes arrive, and our foe already has the power to overwhelm us. What if they get here and it's too late?"

Lementa didn't reply.

* * *

Two Weeks Later

* * *

"I'm bored out of my gourd!" Jax groaned, stretching his armored legs in disregard of his partner's personal space.

Dimitri paid it no mind, instead simply moving out of the way without taking his eyes off the book in front of him. The station they'd been given, which was really no more than a dent in the wall of the Argnos defense trench, was barely large enough to house two Guardsmen comfortably. Living in it next to the massive steel-encased body of Jax was next to impossible, but Dimitri was making the best of it. Such was his role as a Guardsman in service of the Emperor.

Jax went on. "When're those Ork fellers gonna get their shit together and attack? They didn't seem like the kind of people to just sit around with their thumbs up their asses for this long. Shit, we've been waiting forever!"

"Two weeks," Dimitri corrected, "But I see your point. I've never heard of Orks waiting to attack someone."

"Then why aren't we gunning 'em down right now?" Jax asked.

Dimitri shrugged, still not looking up from his reading. "I couldn't tell you. Maybe they're busy finishing off the civilians in the Hives they've taken."

Jax shook his head. "Nope, can't be. Weren't none left when we fought our way out of Thantos."

"They could have been hiding," Dimitri suggested, "I would've."

Jax smirked. "Yeah you did."

"You be quiet about that!" he hissed, locking eyes with Jax, "Do you know what a Commissar would do to me if he found out what I did to live through that? It's bad enough that I retreated with you, but to have laid there while my fellows were slaughtered-"

"Okay, okay!" Jax said, "Jeez, take a joke, Dimitri! I ain't gonna tell nobody."

"Good," Dimitri replied.

He returned to his book, continuing his read in peace. Silence returned to their station. Jax shifted again in another restless movement of his legs. Dimitri moved to accommodate him.

After getting through to the perimeter trench and talking to Lieutenant Rakatev, Jax and Dimitri settled in nicely. The Lieutenant, whose fifth company was already stretched too thin along the long forward trench, was more than happy to accept the both of them. He didn't ask too many questions about Jax, either, simply accepting him as a heavily armed out-of-towner.

None of the men of fifth company had ever seen anything quite like Jax. For the first few days he and Dimitri were avoided, with Jax being treated to the quiet reverence that commoners saved for important people. But after a week, Jax's personality won through and he was accepted as an honorary, if much better armed, Guardsman.

Word of the Confederate spread like a wildfire through the ranks, as all good news did in a depressing organization like the Imperial Guard. Now the bunk hole Dimitri shared with Jax was constantly being visited by fellow soldiers, each stopping by to talk with the friendly marine.

Dimitri still wasn't sure where Jax had come from, but that wasn't due to a lack of trying. The problem was that every time he tried to start up that conversation, something or someone interrupted him. In the end, Dimitri decided to push it back on his agenda for a while.

Maybe by then they would be somewhere less public. Or just dead under a tide of green flesh. Dimitri found that he was comfortable with either eventuality.

"Whatcha readin'?" Jax asked.

"The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer."

"What's that?"

Dimitri thumbed through the pages, not really caring what page it fell on. "It's a book that's issued to every Guardsman, though not a lot of it is really worth the paper it's printed on."

"Then why read it?" Jax asked in his customary blunt tone.

The question made a lot of sense. In his experience, Dimitri found most of the Primer to be false by field experience. The most obvious example he could think of was the book's talk of the 'cowardly Orks' that were 'known to flee before the iron might of the Emperor's armies.' Dimitri had been fighting the Orks since the regiment landed on Dancer VI, and not once had he seen them flee.

Dimitri answered with that thought in mind. "I suppose the equipment guide is pretty much spot on. And the prayers are nice for moments of doubt."

"Prayers?" Jax asked, "Like, to God or something?"

At that, Dimitri snapped his book shut and looked up at his companion. "Come again, Jax?"

The Confederate looked confused. "What? I was just wondering who you pray to, is all."

Had it come from anyone else, saying such an ignorant thing would be considered amongst the highest heresy a Guardsman could commit. To not show reverence to His beneficence in such a blunt question was unheard of. To even _question_, for that matter, who a Guardsman prayed to was in turn the same as questioning His divinity. The action was blasphemous beyond anything Dimitri had ever seen before, and was punishable by death.

Had this been a Guardsman talking to him, Dimitri would have turned him over to his superiors without a second thought. However, Jax wasn't a fellow Guardsman. Jax, though a strange man, was also brutally honest. Something about his phrasing of the question told Dimitri that he didn't mean it offensively; he truly did not know.

"Jax, we need to have a talk." Dimitri leaned in to speak privately with the Confederate. He opened the Primer's back cover, where the most famous image in the Imperium was printed across two pages. Dimitri, as he did every time he saw it, felt a shiver down his spine as he looked upon the scene of betrayal depicted in the picture. He pointed to a large, golden-clad man and began a long process. "This is the God-Emperor of Mankind…"

* * *

The strike cruiser _Saradon_'s razor-fine prow knifed through the Immaterium, hurtled forth by its powerful warp drives, bound for the embattled planet Dancer VI. Within its cramped halls strode Veteran Sergeant Hastrel Dirich, his armored boots clanking against the polished metal flooring. Chapter serfs ducked out of his way as he marched, not wanting to be caught beneath the full crushing weight of his yellow-blue Aquilla armor.

Dirich was, like the rest of the Space Marines aboard the _Saradon_, agitated. He was agitated at the fact that Chapter Master Phillida had ordered them away from fighting the Red Corsairs in the Novaguard system to deal with the budding Waaagh! on Dancer VI, agitated that Captain Pontius and the rest of the Third Company stayed behind to continue the war, and agitated that as veteran sergeant he was required to lead this splinter mission.

But most of all, he was agitated about Inquisitor Tripe, the Ordo Xenos bastard who had requested the Chapter's help in dispatching Narkull's band of greenskins.

"You seem in a hurry, brother-sergeant," said a voice, "Is something the matter?"

_Speak of the Daemon_, Dirich thought as he turned around.

Tripe was standing in the middle of the hallway, having just come out of the compartment he had claimed immediately upon boarding the _Saradon_. The Inquisitor was dressed in his customary black war coat. He was sweating profusely from the pores on his face, the only place where any skin was showing, and not for the first time in the week-long trip, Dirich found himself wondering what the man did in his secured compartment.

"Nothing's the matter, Inquisitor," Dirich replied, careful not to let even a bit of doubt creep into his voice, "I was just going to the bridge."

Tripe's eyes didn't change; he hadn't detected anything wrong with Dirich's tone, then. "No need to check our path, brother-sergeant. We're still en route to Dancer VI. If anything were to come up, you would be the first to know."

Dirich doubted that, since Tripe had brought along his own personal Navigator for this assignment. He would probably be second in line to know of any change, and in an emergency, that could cost lives. That was another fact that helped to fuel the Space Marine's agitation. "Yes, I know that."

"You wish to ask me something, sergeant," Tripe said. It wasn't a question.

Dirich frowned. It was probably a bad idea to let the Inquisitor know what he was thinking, but at this point, he didn't really give a damn. He squared his feet to the Inquisitor in a battle stance without conscious thought and started in on it.

"Dancer VI is not a strategically important world, and while I see the point for stopping Narkull before he becomes too powerful, I cannot help but wonder at my men's place in all this. Fighting such a low-ranking Ork on a backwater planet seems a job for the Guard, not for our chapter. So, why then are we being brought into this?"

"You were there on Kunkles," came the Inquisitor's reply, "You saw what a danger Narkull can be."

Tripe was trying to play on Dirich's feelings for the men he lost on that planet so many years ago, to make some kind of long-held grief and need of revenge override the veteran's better judgment.

It didn't work.

"I remember Kunkles like it was yesterday. I still grieve for my brothers lost. But I cannot let personal feeling get in the way of my duties," Dirich replied, "The facts are clear, Inquisitor, and they don't add up. So for the sake of my men, tell me, what's our real objective here?"

Tripe was silent for a long moment. Dirich didn't press further, reluctant to breech protocol further than was necessary. Either Tripe would let him in on the mission's true purpose or he wouldn't; Dirich would be comfortable with either, though the former would at least relieve his…agitation.

"Very well, sergeant," Tripe said, starting back through the doorway to his right, "Follow me."

Dirich followed him in. The door behind him closed and sealed itself with a resonating hiss.

* * *

"And that is where He still resides, upon that Golden Throne, powering the guiding light of the Astronomicon and guiding His loyal subjects through these dark times," Dimitri said, coming to the close of a two hour tale, "His is the will that sends us Guardsmen to battle, and by His divine wisdom the Imperium has weathered these ten millennia of strife, war and death."

"Damn," Jax breathed, "So, they hooked him up to that there throne, and it's keeping him alive?"

"Yes. That and His immortal will. He suffers eternally now, battling a never-ending war with Chaos, and so long as one human still lives, he will never rest."

Jax let out a low whistle. "Wow." Apparently, that was all the big man could do to articulate his thoughts.

Dimitri closed his Primer. "And how about you, Jax?"

"What about me?"

"Where do you come from?" the Guardsman pressed. "You clearly weren't born as an Imperial citizen, and that armor you wear is more advanced than a Space Marine's. So, go ahead and spill."

Dimitri watched Jax carefully as the bigger man mulled his answer over. He had no doubt that the Confederate would tell him, but it seemed like a very hard thing for him to do. Finally, Jax opened his mouth to speak…

…and the trenchline's sirens started to wail.

"Incoming enemies! Incoming enemies!" blared the pole-mounted vox-casters, "All Guardsmen man your posts! Prepare to repel hostile forces at hard points alpha through sierra!"

Jax leapt to his feet, beating Dimitri to the wall. He racked the bolt on his Impaler and sighted downrange, whooping in excitement. "About damn time they got around to hittin' us!"

Dimitri tucked his Primer away in his satchel and bellied up to the earthen wall, sliding a magazine into his lasrifle. He looked down the trench to his left and right, seeing the rest of fifth company taking up positions as well. In the hard point to their immediate right were Lieutenant Rakatev and his vox man, hunkered down in the midst of a cluster of line troops. He caught the eye of Menshaw, the lieutenant's ever-present Ratling. The sniper gave Dimitri a curt nod, which the private returned before looking out at the enemy.

The Orks moved in a great green horde, flowing across the barren landscape with their weapons held high. They were chanting as they marched, the entire army belting out an idiotic cadence that carried next to no rhythm. Even as far as he was from the filthy mass, Dimitri was already able to smell them. But that meant that…

"Lieutenant Rakatev!" he shouted, "Don't give the order to fire yet!"

The officer's head whipped around as if he'd been grabbed. "Why the hell not?"

"We're downwind! They don't even know we're here!"

Rakatev nodded. "Good thinking, trooper!"

As the lieutenant started issuing orders to his vox man, Jax looked down at Dimitri. "That was damn good thinkin'. Bet you could make general."

"Throne, I hope not," Dimitri muttered.

"So now what? We just wait?"

"Yes," Dimitri said, forcing his body tighter to the dirt wall. He watched the Orks come closer and took aim, hoping for a kill shot when they got closer.

Next to him, Jax was busy highlighting targets in his HUD and classifying them according to importance, already developing what his training called a 'target portfolio'. He'd used the visor's camera to scrapbook every odd target he'd ever engaged, and his suit's onboard computer had a very full combat image log to attest to that. Jax felt that it was important to have a hobby.

He hummed as he went about his business, scanning and logging all the different shaped Orks before him, noting absently that the horde would be within the range of the Guard's lasrifles in ten minutes. He could hit them now, but that would mess up the strategy, and Jax had been drilled to _never_ mess up strategy.

**Author's Note: Sorry about that cliffhanger. I promise I'll make up for it!**

**Firstly, I feel need to clear something up. A couple of you expressed some feelings that Jax as a Terran marine might not be able to hold up to some of 40k's threats. I must establish that this story considers Terran engineering to be generally superior to that of the Imperium. This is based on the fact that the Terrans never experienced something like the Dark Age of Technology and their culture has not resorted to superstitious barbarism and inquisitional witch hunting. The Terrans don't lose knowledge, they gain it as they adapt to the ever-changing problems they are faced with, so their tech would be superior. This, essentially, puts Jax's CMC power armor with its Neo-steel plating at a level of protection slightly higher than that of the comparatively rough ceramite-based Aquila armor. This gives him the ability to take a punch from all the basic forms of line-infantry from 40k and, with his Impaler, he is able to give out a fair bit of pain as well. That said, he is just one man, and he can't very well fight a Carnifex single-handed.**

**Second, with regards to other elements of StarCraft entering the story, I have to say I didn't think about it at first. This was just supposed to be one Confederate marine in the 40k universe, though I guess I could enter other characters like Raynor. I rather like it the way it is, but I'd like you readers' thoughts on it first. If I do put anyone else from StarCraft in, it wont be for a while. I've got some rough plans for where this is going, and I'd like to flesh those out first.**

**Thirdly, the issue of where Jax is. He is my own character and first appeared in a story called StarCraft: Brain Damage. His death scene from that fic is shown at the beginning of chapter 2 of this story, and would really only matter to you if you read Brain Damage. Don't feel inclined to go and read that old story, though. Nothing in it is really vital to understanding The Confederate, and aside from a few nods here and there, it won't be referenced all that much.  
**

**Sorry about this lengthy note, I just felt some of that needed to be cleared up. The next chapter should be up by the end of this coming week. I try to update once a weekend for all my main stories. **

**Thanks to all of you who have reviewed so far. The response to this story has been absolutely incredible and is by far the best I've ever gotten in such a short period of time. You all really seem to like it, and as such I'm trying my damnedest to make The Confederate the best story it possibly can be. Let me know what you thought of this chapter, and drop any thoughts you have in a review or a PM. **


	4. Chapter 4: Stuck in With the Boyz

"Lord-colonel!"

The honorific echoed around the vast cathedral, banging off the ribbed arches and chiseled figures of saints emerging from the surrounding pillars, yanking Lementa's attention away from the golden idol of the Emperor on the pedestal before him. He turned to see Kissov standing next to the pew, the young man's face twisted in a visible effort to contain some vital information.

"What?" he asked.

"The Orks, sir." The junior lieutenant seemed to deflate as he got the words out. "They've hit the Argnos defense line."

Lementa swore on reflex, at the same time realizing that it was bound to happen. "How bad is it?"

* * *

Sixty-Seven Miles Away

* * *

An Ork roared in delight as it cracked a screaming Guardsman's head open with its makeshift axe. The alien then bashed the corpse again and again, ejecting more blood into the air. Dimitri sighted on the distracted Ork and shot it in the eye, sizzling its brain with a superheated beam of red.

All along the primary trench, Orks were brawling with Guardsmen chopper-to-bayonet and stubber-to-lasrifle in a brutal and disorganized melee. It had been just ten minutes since Lieutenant Rakatev gave the order to open fire on the unsuspecting Ork formation, and already the battle had turned to chaos.

Dimitri was with Rakatev and his vox-man now, holding their ground in the HQ hard point. The soldiers around him were firing into the Orks, each shot being swallowed up by the bubbling green mass that flowed across the floor of the trench on either side of them.

Rakatev revved his chainsword and buried it in the face of an Ork that rushed their position, at the same time shouting over the roar of battle, ordering the rest of the company to repel the attack. "We've got to get more firepower on these greenskins!" Rakatev threw a glance back to his vox-man. "Lang, are those Basilisks ready yet?"

"Yes Lieutenant!" the corporal replied.

Rakatev pulled his chainsword from the mushed remains below him and gestured up to the eastern part of the trench. "Tell them to fire for effect there, on hard point sierra."

"But sir, that's Sergeant Sakarov's position!" Lang protested, "What if he hasn't made it out yet?"

"Sakarov's dead! Hard point sierra belongs to the Orks!" Rakatev shouted, "Now, call in the bombardment!"

Lang only dallied a second before complying. As the vox-man called in the coordinates, Rakatev turned to Dimitri. "Private, where in the Warp is that Confederate friend of yours?"

As if on cue, Jax pulled himself free of the melee right in front of them. His armor was spattered with gore, and as he got to his feet he paused to turn and spray the aliens behind him with spikes. The barrage of steel scythed down two square yards of Orks, punching them into the dirt and pinning their broken bodies in unnatural positions.

Jax turned from the carnage, the barrel of his Impaler smoking, and favored the Guardsmen with a casual salute. "What's goin' on?"

A little over a mile away, the Basilisk shells hit their mark in a thunderclap of force, throwing half a ton of churned mud, broken alien bodies and screaming Guardsmen into the air.

* * *

Cathedral of the Emperor's Divinity

* * *

"Not well, sir," Kissov admitted, "Initial estimates from the _St. Timov_'s orbital pict-recorders place enemy disposition at 6-to-1 in favor of the enemy."

Lementa nodded, already crunching numbers in his head. "Is Lieutenant Rakatev still alive?"

"Yes sir. He's transmitting now, asking for reinforcements." The tactical analyst hesitated. "Sir, should we move the armored company from its position around Utnos Hive to assist them?"

"No," Lementa said, "If we move the tanks, it leaves our flank wide open, and that's just what Narkull wants from us. That's why the attack came at Argnos: it's just a diversion." The colonel stood, feeling his knee joints pop after an hour of inactivity. "Have Commissar Yanavich reinforce them with the new blood."

Kissov, to his credit, managed to keep the stutter from his voice. "The Scum Squads, sir?" he asked, using the regimental slang term for the newly-recruited Guardsmen of Dancer VI's hive cities, "With all due respect, sir, I don't believe they're well-disciplined enough to-"

"They can shoot straight," Lementa said, cutting the younger man off, "and so long as Yanavich is there to inspire them, they'll be more than a match for those Orks. Send the order."

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 4: Stuck in With the Boyz_

* * *

Two Weeks Ago

* * *

Dimitri stopped just outside fifth company's HQ, little more than a sand-bagged nest in the trench complex, and snapped off a textbook salute. "Private Dimitri Vlasna, Lieutenant, reporting as ordered."

"Right, at ease," the Lieutenant replied absently. Like the rest of his command staff, he was clearly finding it hard to take his eyes off of the white armored giant that stood behind Dimitri. "Who are you?"

"Sergeant Fred Jax, Confederate Alpha Squadron," the friendly hulk held out his hand, "Good to meetcha, Lieutenant…um…"

"Rakatev," explained the officer as he hesitantly shook Jax's vice clamp of a hand, "Alpha Squadron, huh? Is that a local enforcer group?"

"Nah," Jax said, going with the trouble-avoiding cover story Dimitri had told him to use. "It's more like a freelance kind of thing."

In Dimitri's experience, the Guard was much more ready to accept mercenaries into their ranks in times of trouble than any other kind of outsider. If they were to explain in detail to this Lieutenant how Jax had appeared in Emperor Square, both of them would have probably been shot on general principle just to avoid the whole mess of figuring it all out.

"Oh," Rakatev said. He didn't look very keen on pressing the issue. "Anyway, we would appreciate it if you saw fit to stay with us. I'm sure we can work out some form of payment if that's what you require."

Jax's eyebrows shot up. "What, like money? That what you mean by payment?" Rakatev nodded, fueling Jax's enthusiasm. "Well, hell yeah! How much we talkin' here?"

"I would have to check with the higher-ups first, so-"

"Okay, then check me in," Jax said, grabbing his Impaler in a ready position, "Where do you need me and Dimitri?"

Rakatev blinked away his surprise and gestured to the Ratling next to him. "Private Menshaw will show you around and give you a post between here and hard point delta."

"Understood, sir," Dimitri said, saluting again.

Jax didn't say anything to Rakatev, as he was already mesmerized by Menshaw. "Hey there, little feller! You gonna show us around like a good boy?"

Menshaw, for his part, hissed at the Confederate and shuffled out of the HQ, the butt of his long-las sniper rifle dragging through the dirt behind him. Jax frowned and looked to Dimitri.

"Nasty little midget, ain't he?"

Dimitri shook his head, suppressing a laugh, and started after the Ratling. Jax followed him, his armored boots leaving indentions in the dirt as he walked.

* * *

The Present Day, Three Minutes after Basilisk Bombardment

* * *

The dirt storm kicked up by the artillery blew downwind across the trench, covering the skirmishing aliens and humans in a shroud of reduced visibility. In the gloom, Dimitri could see sporadic bursts of las-fire and vague, brutish shapes moving about, but little in the way of hostile contacts.

"Hurry, before they recover!" Rakatev ordered, kicking an emptied ammo crate into the trench, "Get a barricade up!"

Dimitri slung his lasrifle, grabbed a dead Ork around its shoulders and with great effort pushed it up onto the ammo crate. The other Guardsmen started doing similar things, grabbing anything they could and working together to get a barricade between them and the dazed Orks.

Dimitri tried to pick up another Ork, this one a decapitated Nob. He struggled to pull the corpse from the mud, but found it too heavy for his human arms.

"I got it," Jax declared, brushing Dimitri aside with his arm. The Confederate reached down with one hand and grabbed the Nob by the scruff of its neck. He hurled it onto the barricade, letting it land in a thud and squish of blood, before grabbing another corpse from the pile at his feet.

Dimitri watched Jax work, piling corpse after corpse onto the ammo crate to form a makeshift sandbag construction of green flesh and strips of broken leather armor. There was no effort taken in the work, just a casual back-and-forth motion from Jax's armored limbs.

A stubber popped in the raging dust, the bullet streaming out of the gloom and pinging off Jax's shoulder pauldron, causing him to drop his latest meat shield.

"Hey!" Jax shouted. His Impaler replied in a ripping burst, spikes swirling the dust as they chased down the offending Ork shooter. A death scream echoed from the clouded northern trench, followed by a thunk. "Gotcha!"

Dimitri looked to the duo of Rakatev and his vox-man. Corporal Lang, lasrifle held in shaking hands, busied himself with other channels in his headset as his superior shouted into the vox receiver to any remaining squad sergeants.

"Yes, you heard me right: pull back to the company HQ, on the double!" Rakatev paused as the person on the other end replied, unheard to Dimitri over the snap-crack of las fire. "By the Throne, do I sound like I'm running a medicae tent? Leave your gakking wounded to the xenos! We've not the time for this! Get your arses over here! Call sequence is Holy Terra, forget to respond and we open fire." The Lieutenant thunked Lang on the back of his helmet, getting the vox-man's attention. "Get through to Regimental Command yet?"

"Yes sir!" Lang replied, "They're sending reinforcements now! Estimated time to arrival is thirty minutes, sir!"

Rakatev swore and spat in the dirt. "No good. We'll be dead in half that. Tell them to quit dragging their asses." He paused and fired off six shots with his laspistol into the dust before addressing the surrounding soldiers. "Men, begin issuing call code 'Holy' to approaching contacts. If they don't respond with 'Terra' fast enough, assume they are hostile and act accordingly."

Dimitri frowned, but replied with a 'yes sir' and got to work manning the new north side barricade along with several of his fellows, laying his lasrifle across the Ork-corpse sandbags for additional stability. He sighted along the barrel and into the murky dust storm, searching for a figure amidst the chaos.

A sound of whirring gears sounded above him and Dimitri looked up to see Jax standing behind him, his height giving him enough clearance to sight over the heads of the Guardsmen.

The Confederate looked down at him. "How you holdin' up?"

"Fair," Dimitri replied honestly, "Compared to getting out of Thantos, this is child's play."

"Yeah," Jax agreed, "This reminds me of this one time when I was fighting in the Sara system back in '98-" An alert beeped inside the marine's visor, jerking his attention downrange. "Uh-oh. Something's coming down the pipe."

Dimitri back into the dust, faintly making out the figure of a body running toward them, hunched between the high walls of the trench. "Holy!" Dimitri called out. He waited three seconds, then tried again. "Holy!"

Still no reply. Las shots split the air, quickly followed by a burst of spikes.

* * *

One Week Ago

* * *

"Okay, here we go!" Jax said, shuffling the deck of cards in his armored hands with a delicacy that seemed at odds with his hulking demeanor, "Poker: the game that takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master! Y'all ready for this?"

The crowd of 30-something Guardsmen who had congregated in the supply pit declared their readiness with raised fists and shouted hoorays. Dimitri stood at the entrance to the pit, leaning against one of the earthen walls with his rifle slung and helmet in the crux of his arm.

He watched as Jax explained the game to the soldiers in attendance, throwing out terms like 'raise', 'hand' and 'flush' in a rush of words. It was as if Jax had been waiting to explain the game for a very long time, and while his instructions were at times hazy and difficult to understand, his enthusiasm was contagious. Soon he had dealt out cards on the rations crate being used as a table and, along with several of the Guard, became engaged in a tense bit of gambling.

Each revealed hand was met with cheers from the spectators and Dimitri could see money exchanging hands not only on the card table but also amongst the spectators, the result of side bets on who would win the game. Private Menshaw, as expected of an entrepreneurial Ratling, was overseeing the side bets and earning himself a take from both the winners and losers.

Fifth company had taken to Jax easily largely, Dimitri expected, due to their desperate need for anything upbeat. Just like the rest of the 42nd Marathon Regiment, fifth company was a worn out, depressed lot of soldiers. Having just been assembled and trained two years ago, the 42nd had spent fully all of its operational time in combat.

After a year and a half long war defending the agri-world Sengladesh against elements of the Red Corsairs Traitor Marines—a small part of the still-unfinished Novaguard War—they had been shipped here to Dancer VI, with no new supplies and no R&R time save what they managed on the voyage aboard the _St. Timov_.

All of these factors combined to make for a very tired, very disgruntled bunch of Guardsmen. Dimitri could see why they took to Jax so readily: he was an unbeatable beacon of optimism in what was otherwise a dreary existence.

Dimitri felt it too, though to a lesser extent, and as he watched the poker game unfold before him to the amusement of his comrades-at-arms, the young private was reminded of the one issue with Jax that bothered him.

He still didn't know where in the Warp the Confederate came from.

* * *

The Present Day, A Distance From the Argnos Defensive Trench

* * *

Boris Yanavich was a Commissar. He had been his for all of his adult life, and he wouldn't change his profession for all of the wealth of the Adeptus Terra. To do such a thing would run counter to the ideals of the Commissariat. That would be heresy, and Yanavich would then have to execute himself, which would be suicide. And suicide was a sin unforgivable to the God-Emperor.

So he stayed a Commissar, and as such he was committed wholly to inspiring the Guardsmen under his command to achieve victory, either by smashing the enemy under a mallet of courageous valor or by drowning them in a sea of warm flesh and blood. Either way, the Imperium would be victorious.

Presently, Yanavich was perched atop a Leman Russ tank as it rumbled across the badlands between Utnos Hive and Argnos Hive. Behind his tank was a procession of some four thousand newly recruited hive dwellers herded by eight additional Commissars, all of whom Yanavich had personally trained in the delicate arts of inspiration.

The hive dwellers were a rag-tag bunch, armed mostly with low-quality stubbers that were either assembled in the under hive or had been scavenged from the destroyed remains of the Orks' first attack out in the minefields.

That had been a good day's worth of training: having them try and navigate a live minefield as they gathered weapons. It was one of the few things Yanavich could do to shape the tunnel-crawling gakkers into something that resembled Guardsmen on such short notice, and as he looked out across the formation behind him, he thought he had done a damn good job.

"How far out are we?" he shouted down into the turret.

Armor Sergeant Zaita looked up from his instrument panel where he sat in the sweltering commander's seat. "Six miles, Commissar!" he shouted over the tank's roaring engine, "We'll be within firing range soon!"

Without thanking Zaita, Yanavich turned his attention back to the marching mob. He took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of the world around him in all their dusty, exhaust-filled glory, letting the atmosphere fill his lungs.

"Ah," he sighed in delight, "Battle."

* * *

Argnos Defensive Trench

* * *

Dimitri shouted. "Holy!"

"Terra!" came the reply, quickly followed by two, four, six Guardsmen leaping the barricade. They landed in the HQ, their bloodied boots causing them to skid across the packed earth. A seventh got hung up on the top of the barricade and fell with a yelp into Jax's outstretched hand.

"Here you go," the marine said, helping the trooper safely into the HQ.

"Thank you," the Guardsman replied. His right arm had been torn off at the elbow and was crudely bandaged by a stained white dressing, but somehow he still managed to bring himself to attention. "Where do you need me?"

Jax opened his mouth to reply, but Dimitri beat him to it. "Right over here, if you can still shoot."

"I'm not dead yet," he answered, taking up the vacant spot next to Dimitri, lasrifle held one-handed over the barricade's top. He looked over at Dimitri. "The name's Tokerov, by the way."

"I don't care."

Jax flicked one disapproving armored finger against the back of Dimitri's helmet. "Shut the hell up." He looked to Tokerov. "Sorry about that. Dimitri here can be a real whiny bitch sometimes. My name's Fred Jax, and it's good to meet you."

Somewhere at the right end of the barricade, a Guardsman shouted out, "Holy!" The response came in the form of a tearing fusillade of stubber rounds that chewed into the makeshift barricade, penetrating the piled Ork flesh in wet smacks.

One caught Tokerov in the temple, the heavy bullet imbedding itself in the private's brain before breaking apart into fragments that sheared through his skull and into the open air, leaving behind them the shredded remains of a face. The Private keeled over, dead before he even hit the ground.

The rest of the Guardsmen along the barricade retaliated in a wave of las-fire that cut down whatever Ork had fired on them.

In the silence that followed, Dimitri ejected the spent energy pack from his rifle and looked back at where Jax was staring at Tokerov's dead body. "That's why I didn't want to know his name," he said, slamming a replacement into the weapon's empty slot.

Jax's expression was hidden behind his visor. "He seemed like an alright guy."

"Maybe he was," Dimitri admitted, "but knowing that would have only made his death harder." He sighed, thinking of how to sum up his thoughts. "Friends are overrated."

Jax turned his unreadable face to bear down on Dimitri. "That's pretty cold."

Dimitri shrugged. "It keeps me alive."

"If you think life without friends is living," Jax said, his voice coming out in a snarl made all the more angry by the distortion of his suit's external speakers, "then you're a fuckin' idiot."

Dimitri had initially judged Jax as being very simple, as the kind of person who didn't think through complex concepts like loyalty and friendship and just took them at face value, finding companionship in anyone who acted nice toward him. Now he threw that logic out the door in an instant.

_I underestimated him_. The realization hit Dimitri with enough shock to render him speechless for a moment. When he finally found his voice, it came out in a shudder. "Jax, listen, I-"

"Shut up," Jax barked, "You don't even care about the guy serving right next to you. Where I come from, that'd make you a real yellow-bellied sonuvabitch. Hell, maybe I oughtta tell the Lieutenant over there where I found you hiding under a pile of your dead buddies back in Thantos."

Dimitri stared at the white armored soldier. "You wouldn't do that."

"No, I wouldn't. If you were my friend," Jax leaned forward till his helmet was mere inches from Dimitri's face, "But apparently, you ain't my friend. Are you Dimitri?"

Dimitri looked up into the reflective visor, seeing the mirrored image of his own face. He hadn't seen himself in what seemed like a year, and it repulsed him. His face was unhealthily thin and his nose was crooked, the result of a bad resetting after it was broken by a cultist on Sengladesh.

But what really haunted Dimitri were his eyes.

When he'd joined the Guard on his seventeenth birthday, Dimitri's eyes were a deep blue. After two years of constant war, they had become grayed, milky orbs set in sockets of drawn, pallid flesh, their ghostliness brought out even more by dark crescents of sleep deprivation that shadowed his lids. They were the eyes of someone much older than Dimitri's nineteen years, someone much more jaded, cynical and set against an unforgiving galaxy, but more so than any of those things, his eyes were of a man who was terribly, cripplingly alone.

The visor peeled back, taking with it Dimitri's honest lens into his own soul and replacing it with the strong jaw line, furrowed brow and joyful eyes of another. Jax's eyes revealed a soul much better coped to dealing with hardship. It was as if the Confederate's natural tendency toward feeling for others was a...positive? Was that possible?

"Dimitri, you hearin' me?" Jax asked, shaking Dimitri by the shoulder.

The Guardsman's eyes shifted back into focus and locked with Jax's own. "Jax, would you be my friend?"

Jax grinned. "Shit, Dimitri, we always was buddies. I was just testing you."

Dimitri gave a numb nod, still trying to cope with the epiphany Jax, however unwittingly, had subjected him to. "Well, did I pass?"

"Absotively, posolutely." Jax held out a hand.

Dimitri gripped it without hesitation and was pulled to his feet, the yank bringing with it a mental snap back into the reality of the war going on around them.

The dust was finally settling and with it the sounds of battle were once again increasing. The HQ was packed full of guardsmen, their dented, bloodied and scratched flak armor banging together as they shifted around to medicae stations, ammo crates and the two barricades. None, though, seemed to have noticed Jax and Dimitri's conversation and if they did, no one let on that they cared.

Sergeants grouped their squads, readying them for yet-to-be-assigned scouting missions into the artillery-shattered eastern part of the trench. Every so often a burst of las-fire would erupt from the barricades, but anything too serious had yet to show itself.

Lieutenant Rakatev was again shouting into his vox-receiver, sounding as though he was explaining where exactly he needed the reinforcements.

Corporal Lang, however, was looking at the badlands outside the trench. Abruptly, he turned and shouted, "Enemy reinforcements! They've got armor support!"

Jax looked to Dimitri. "Does 'armor support' mean 'ass load of tanks' to you guys?"

"Yes."

"Whew," Jax breathed, "Thank God."

Dimitri frowned. "What else could it be?"

"Well, I thought maybe something like giant robots, or cyborg horses, or some kind of undead walker with laser guns, or-"

"No," Dimitri said, stopping what he was sure would be a long-winded rant, "It's probably tanks."

Over at the trench wall, Rakatev looked out over the approaching Orks with his field glasses, spotting amongst the hordes of aliens and several wartraks the lumbering bulk of a Squiggoth. The creature marched across the badlands, its great shoulders rolling with each earthshaking step, jostling the myriad armored plates and Orks that rode upon its back.

"Throne, why can't it just be tanks with these Orks?" Rakatev asked himself, "Lang, where's my gakking Basilisks?"

The vox-man shook his head. "Not operational, sir. A fighter bomber just hit that spire and dropped off a team of Ork kommandos. By the sound of it, the Basilisks are compromised and crews dead. The PDF are fighting to take the spire back, but-"

Rakatev cut him off. "And Commissar Yanavich?"

"Nearly here, sir."

As if to underline Lang's words, the Squiggoth threw back its head, bellowed a long roar, and charged.

**Author's Note: So, a couple of basic formatting changes occurred in this chapter, namely the setting designation breaking up sections of the text. Normally I don't do things like that, but this story needed it to aid in keeping locations mapped out for the reader, as well as helping out with humor in a couple of spots. **

**Thanks again for all the feedback, both in reviews and the couple of long PM sessions I had with a few of you. With all of that input, I reached a decision about the addition of more StarCraft characters. If I do bring in more, it won't be until much, much, much later. I feel Jax, Dimitri and the other 40k characters that are effected by the Confederate will suffice for now, though that may change. Though if more do arrive, they most likely won't be cannon characters.**

**We've fallen into a Saturday update schedule with this story, so you can count on that. Having a regular deadline keeps me on task, something that a lot of fanfiction authors really need to get on top of. Even if it is a hobby, this is preparation for writing commercially, and being on task is a big step toward becoming a professional. I guess what I'm saying is that you can count on this story getting one chapter a week.**

**And now for a question. The next two-three chapters are going to focus on wrapping up the war against the Orks on Dancer VI. After that, our protagonists will move on with another group to go and fight...something. I've got a few ideas as to what, but nothing concrete. So the question is: what do you want to see Jax fight? 40k obviously has a wealth of things to choose from, not just in terms of playable races but also things from just the background lore. Think about it, then drop your answer in a review or a PM, and while you're at it, tell me what you thought of the above chapter.**

**Oh, yeah, and sorry again for a half-ass cliffhanger. I'm really trying to break that habit...  
**


	5. Chapter 5: FIRE!

The Leman Russ's engine jumped up in pitch, the extra boost of speed forcing its treads across the trench with ease to grip the opposite side and pull the tank along. It rumbled out onto the badlands in front of the Argnos defensive trench, staring down the approaching Orks, and stopped.

Inside the tank, Armor Sergeant Zaita looked to his primary loader. "Prepare for firing!"

"Yes sir!" The man turned in his seat and grabbed a shell from the rack, then with a prayer to the tank's machine spirit, shoved it into the main cannon's open breech. The breech slammed shut and locked into place. "Ready for firing!"

Outside the hull, Commissar Yanavich watched from his place in the open turret as his ragtag legion of hive-dwellers leapt the trench and ran out onto the badlands, charging past the tank. He could feel their zealous energy like a physical force as they passed, though years of experience assured the grizzled political officer that that energy would wear off without a good example at the head of the formation.

He knelt down into the main body of the tank. "Armored Sergeant, why have we stopped?"

"Better to target the enemy, Commissar," Zaita replied without looking back from the commander's viewing slit, "Holding our ground will allow us to-"

Yanavich's bolt pistol barked and Zaita's head exploded, spraying the left-side sponsoon gunner with a blast of mashed brains. The tank's crew looked up at Yanavich in shock, and he met them with a cool gaze.

"Holding ground is not the way of the true guardsman. At all times, attack," he declared. Standing up in the turret again, Yanavich drew his saber and held it out toward the enemy, and more specifically, the rampaging Squiggoth. "Now then, drive me closer! I want to hit them with my sword!"

The Leman Russ lurched forward, kicking up dust as it roared past the greenhorn guardsmen that swarmed across the badlands. As they passed, Yanavich reinforced their boldness with waves of his saber and calls to battle, all the while getting closer and closer to the Orks.

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 5: FIRE!!_

* * *

Strike Cruiser _Saradon_, High Orbit above Dancer VI

* * *

Dirich watched Dancer VI's slow rotation through the arched view port, its surface distorted by the effect that the myriad panels of ornate armorglas had on anything being viewed through them. The planet's main continent was an arid waste, dotted by six hive cities: a textbook example of a most boring inner Ultima Segmentum world, of which there were thousands.

If it weren't for the natural gas reserves that lay beneath its small hives, the world's weak economy would most likely receive no exterior support and collapse in mere decades. It was for that reason that the code of combat for the planet specified no orbital strikes on the Ork-held hives, despite the lack of surviving citizens in those sectors.

That rule irritated Dirich. Just one of the _Saradon_'s torpedoes could detonate the natural gas beneath the ground and crack the planet's crust for hundreds of miles. A blast of that magnitude would destabilize the entire continent and make mopping up the Orks a trivial matter. But, alas, this was an Imperial Guard war zone, and thus as a guest Dirich had to play by their rules of engagement.

Damn bureaucracies.

"Veteran Sergeant, I believe I have determined your landing zone."

Dirich pulled himself away from the vista and walked over to where Inquisitor Tripe was standing in the auger pit. Serfs scattered as he stepped into the station and peered at the holographic table Tripe indicated. On it was a rendering of the three human-held hives, their complex forms represented by billions of pinpricks of light.

"Where, Lord Inquisitor?"

"Here," Tripe said, indicating a space in front of the northern-most hive where the Orks and Guard had met in battle.

Despite himself, Dirich frowned. "With all due respect, Lord Inquisitor, I think we would be better suited deployed at the heart of the xenos infestation; better to kill Narkull now in a pinpoint strike than let the war drag on too long."

"No," Tripe stated, "Your purpose here is retrieval, not assassination. My deployment scenario stands. Gather your men. We reach geosynchronous orbit in twenty minutes."

Dirich thought about pressing the issue, but decided it would be best to let it be. He made the sign of the aquila, climbed from the auger pit and left the bridge without another word, intent upon leading his two squads in the rites of preparation. They would be ready when the time came, and not one would be lost in the coming battle. He was sure of that. After all, they were Astartes.

He just hoped that Tripe's prize was worth it.

* * *

Argnos Defensive Trench

* * *

"I thought you said they was tanks."

Dimitri shook his head. "I said they were _probably_ tanks."

Jax pointed his Impaler one-handed at the approaching Squiggoth. "That ain't a tank," he said as though he hadn't heard Dimitri's excuse, "That's a giant lizard monster. You lied to me."

"I said probably!"

In front of them, the Scum Squads swarmed across the badlands. Having crossed the trench in a great wave, these reinforcements had done the job of clearing up the remaining Orks from the Imperial lines for fifth company, a fact that Dimitri was very thankful for. Even with Jax's help, hunting hostiles in the winding earthen corridors would have been difficult for fifth company, especially with their dwindling numbers.

But now he was worried. The reinforcements were charging out to meet the Orks head on, though Dimitri was sure that even with the numerical advantage and a Leman Russ, the chances of an open ground battle going in favor of the Imperials were slim. Add that Squiggoth into the equation and the task became nigh impossible.

"Man," Jax breathed, "Whoever's leading them guys doesn't have his head screwed on right."

Dimitri shrugged. "Probably a commissar."

* * *

Bullets cut through the air from both sides as the Ork horde and Imperial legion closed with each other. Hot lead met skin and men dropped mid-stride, only to be replaced by more of their comrades. At the center of the formation was the tank, acting as an armored spearhead that would break a hole in the Orks and, hopefully, draw most of the aliens' fire so that the rest of the legion could encircle and destroy the remaining forces. In that case, the Russ and its crew would in all reality be slaughtered.

Perched in his turret, Yanavich knew of that goal and its consequences, but he paid it no heed, instead focused singularly on one thing: that bastard Squiggoth.

The tank hit the Orks, crushing several under its treads and goring even more on the spiked plow that adorned its front. Heavy bolters blared from the sponsoons, cutting down the swathes of enemies that flowed around the vehicle's flanks like water around a rock. Blood splashed across the olive-drab steel plating as the tank rumbled on.

In front of them, the Squiggoth bellowed in what may have been animal hatred or some bestial challenge and closed in, its footfalls shaking the earth as it came.

Yanavich punched the side of the turret with the hilt of his saber, signaling the gunner. The Leman Russ's main gun belched forth its payload on a column of fire, the back blast of which roiled across the sides of the tank. The shell went screaming into the Squiggoth's head and detonated, the blast ruining the left side of its face, popping an eyeball and shattering an ivory tusk.

The creature wailed in pain, and pulled its head to the right to begin what Yanavich saw as an agonized retreat, similar to a dog tucking its tail between its legs and running. In this reading of the creature's actions, he couldn't have been more wrong, the injury having served to only further anger the lumbering behemoth.

In its rage, the Squiggoth threw its bulk sideways and hit the Leman Russ's left flank with its massive head, pulverizing the left side sponsoon turret and crushing its gunner. A bone-white tusk, its tip sharpened to a razor-thin point, cut through the armor and gored the driver where he sat.

Steel groaned and rivets popped as the tank lurched to the side, its left-side treads leaving the ground. It tipped, throwing Yanavich to the side, holding onto the rim of the turret to keep from falling out. With his other hand he stabbed out with the saber, slashing wildly at the Squiggoth, but he didn't reach it in time.

Without further ado, the Russ landed on its right side, crushing that sponsoon as well and tossing its overzealous commander onto the baking hot sands.

* * *

"It just tipped the tank," Rakatev said, "Yanavich got thrown out."

Dimitri knew who Yanavich was, and honestly, he wouldn't mind if the Squiggoth crushed him underfoot. Of course, he didn't voice these thoughts aloud. Menshaw, however, did.

"Good. Hope the gakker gets squished."

Rakatev lowered his field glasses and looked at the diminutive abhuman. "You bastard Stunty! Where the hell have you been this whole time?"

"Sniping," Menshaw said. It took little imagination to discern how much of that sniping involved hiding from the real combat. "I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand."

"_Understand!?_ What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you're a sorry excuse for a commanding officer."

Jax gasped. "Don't talk to your superior officer like that!" He pulled back one armored leg and punted Menshaw across the bolt hole with a yelp. The Ratling slammed into an ammo crate, causing a chain reaction that buried him in a pile of discarded flak armor.

Rakatev's dirty face cracked into a rare grin at Menshaw's misfortune. "Always hated that he got assigned to my unit."

"Me too, sir!" piped Lang, "He constantly doubted your superior leadership abilities!"

"Lang, stop brown-nosing."

"Yes sir."

Dimitri watched the exchange occur in his peripheral vision, keeping most of his attention on the battle unfolding before them on the badlands. Without the support of the tank, the rookies were being surrounded by the Orks and forced into a defensive stance. The Squiggoth had moved on from its toppled prey, preferring to gorge itself on the flak armored humans fighting around it.

"They're gonna be cut off in a second," Jax observed, watching the wings of the Ork line close in like the jaws of a bear trap to completely encircle the legion, "We gonna do something?"

"Not sure," Dimitri replied, "Lieutenant?"

Rakatev thought about it for a second. "Yes." He turned to the rest of the assembled guardsmen. "We're moving into the fray! Primary objective is reinforcing the Scum Squads! When we reach them, form up a perimeter by squads! Check your fire and maintain unit cohesion on the way in!" He waved his chainsword to underscore the importance of his next point. "We must get to them and then secure that tank, people. If we don't get its main gun working again, we can't kill that Squiggoth. Is that clear?"

The battered, disheveled and exhausted men of fifth company roared. Dimitri didn't take part, more concerned with the coming assault. "We'll have to get it upright again."

"I can do that." Jax pumped one arm and grinned at Dimitri. "I'm pretty strong."

"So I noticed." The guardsman sighed. "I bloody hate these charges. Nothing between me and a shot to the head but air and a prayer."

Jax made a mock pouting face. "Aw, little Dimitri's all scared of fightin' the big bad Orks."

"I'm not scared."

"'Oh no! The monsters are gonna get me!'" The armored man howled with laughter. "You want Papa Jax to change your diaper, wittle waby?"

"Oh, shut up!" Dimitri shouted, "I'm not scared, damnit! I've been in charges ten times this tough and lived! All I said was I hate them! Does that mean I'm afraid? What am I supposed to do, Jax? Love almost dying?"

Jax frowned. "Shit, Dimitri, I was just messin' with ya. Can't take a joke?"

"No," Dimitri said, turning away, "I suppose not."

Jax was silent for a moment. Then a thought crept into his head, and his smile returned. "Wassa matter? Poor little Dimitri don't have no sense of humor? Aw, that's just too bad-"

Rakatev's chainsword revved, belching smoke and yanking Jax and Dimitri from their private bantering. "For Marathon and the Emperor: charge!"

The Lieutenant jumped up from the trench, followed in short order by Lang, Jax, Dimitri and the rest of fifth company. They ran for the enemy, voices raised in a singular war cry, crackling red beams erupting from their rifles.

Dimitri found himself keeping stride with Jax toward the front of the line, just behind Rakatev and Lang. Their four-man HQ group was surrounded by a tight skirmish line of guardsmen from other squads, all shoulder-to-shoulder in what was intended to form a fast-moving wedge of las-fire and manpower with which to punch through the wall of Orks that had surrounded the rookies and, subsequently, the Leman Russ.

It was a simple but proven tactic that had been used in battles since the founding of the Imperial Guard, and when performed in the right circumstances and by the right group of soldiers, could be quite impressive in its effect. Hopefully it would be enough here.

The volleys of las-fire beat them to the Orks, slicing through armor and skin in burning pinpricks of red heat. Rakatev's bolt pistol barked as they got closer, each shot digging chunks out of alien flesh.

Dimitri was fixing his bayonet as he ran, readying himself for the upcoming melee, when Jax kicked himself into overdrive. The Confederate's long strides carried him past Dimitri and the Lieutenant, closer to the enemy. The Impaler, kept steady as he ran through a combination of advanced stabilization software and a lifetime of experience, exploded in a torrent of violence.

Orks hit the ground in a wide swath, their bodies torn into ribbons of bloodied green meat under the hail of spikes, and still Jax ran on. The guardsmen followed him into the fray, taking to his example with vigor and discharging full power packs into individual foes. Jax reached hand-to-hand range quicker than the rest of the company, using the heavy barrel of his Impaler to cave in an Ork's skull. He pushed into the aliens, shooting and clubbing his way through the xenos.

The company followed him in, men meeting alien in a symphony of clanging blades, cracking las-blasts and booming stubbers.

Dimitri stabbed an Ork in the throat and squeezed the trigger, the additional damage of the beam finishing off the alien with a sizzling shot to the brain. He yanked his blade from the dead creature and turned just in time to see another greenskin leap through the air toward him, its axe ready to cleave him in half as it came down.

"Get down!"

Dimitri ducked and Rakatev's chainsword lashed out above him, slicing the Ork in half at the waist. Guts splashed across Dimitri where he knelt, and he felt a thump where the dead beast's discarded axe handle hit him on the helmet. He stood and nodded to Rakatev.

The Lieutenant returned the nod before diving back into the fray, slashing his way up to where Jax had broken through to the Scum Squads rally point: a ramble of sun-baked boulders forming a half-ass excuse for a defensible position. "Squads 1 thru 4, with me! We are holding this position!" Rakatev looked to Jax. "Confederate!"

Jax shot a bleeding Ork in the head. "What's up?"

"Take squad 4 to the tank and get it working again! Quickly, before that Squiggoth notices us!"

"I'm on it," Jax said, dropping his magazine and inserting a new one, "Squad 4, on me! Dimitri, you too."

* * *

Yanavich pushed himself up against the tread of the tank, wincing from the pain in his right leg where a piece of shrapnel had buried itself like a tetanus-bearing flea. The tank's loader, a man whose name Yanavich still didn't know, crouched next to him with a compact las carbine in his grip.

"Are you it?" Yanavich asked.

The loader nodded. "Yeah, I'm it. The rest of the boys died when that beastie knocked us over."

Just then, the Orks on the other side of the tank opened fire. Bullets panged off the dented plating near Yanavich's head and forced him deeper into cover. When the firing stopped, he leaned out and got off a few quick shots with his pistol, catching at least two of the greenskin bastards in the head. He dropped back and avoided another burst of lead and drew a frag grenade from the folds of his great coat.

"Here," he said, handing the charge to the loader, "give that to the bastards."

The loader grinned and took the grenade. Yanavich readied his sidearm and waited for the shooting to stop, then leaned out and fired off his entire clip in quick succession. He heard the ping of the grenade arming, followed by a grunt as the loader hurled it at the Orks.

Yanavich ducked back and started reloading, listening to the wham of the grenade detonating, followed by cries of agony from the injured Orks.

"Oh yeah!" the loader shouted, pumping his fist into the air, "Got those gakkers!"

The lad leaned out of cover to see what his grenade had done, curiosity getting the better of him. Yanavich reached out to pull him back, knowing even as he did so that it was too late. A round careened through the air and lodged itself between the loader's eyes, knocking his body into the dirt with a fountain of blood squirting from the bullet hole.

Yanavich swore. This whole damned charge was one big mess. His tank was ruined, his leg inoperable, he was cut off from the rest of his forces and now he didn't even have another soldier to die alongside. He had failed the Emperor, and so there was only one thing left to do.

Sucking up the pain through gritted teeth, Yanavich got to his feet and drew his saber, ready to die in a vain-glorious, one-man charge.

* * *

On da uver side of da tank, Thaz Lotsa Dakka was makin' Gork an' Mork proud by unloadin' wit his big shoota at da wimpy humie dat wuz cowerin' for cover behind da steel. Da rest of da boyz in Thaz's group wuz shootin' as well, laughin' as dey did, havin' lotsa fun, chippin' away at da armor wit every shot.

"C'mon boyz!" Thaz shouted, "Give da humie sum more dakka!"

"Sure fing!"

"Youse da boss, Thaz!"

Thaz laughed. "Yer right, Iz da boss! Kill 'em!" He put a new belt of shooty into da big shoota and kept up da firin'. "Who's got da skorcha?"

"Iz got it, boss!" said an Ork.

Thaz nodded. "Go giv da humie a little burn!"

"You got it, boss!" Da skorcha-boy gave one of da wheel fingies on his back tank a twist, den he started ta walk toward da tank. Fire came outta da skorcha and burned da one humie Thaz had shot earlier.

Outta nowhere, some fing smacked da tank of burny fuel. Da skorcha boy exploded, his bloody bitz sprayin' across da rest of da boyz.

Thaz turned hisself around and saw a bunch of humies coming up from da rear, lead by one big humie in white armor. Da biggun fired his shoota, layin' down da biggest bunch of dakka Thaz had eva seen, cuttin' thru da boyz and knockin' 'em down like nothin'.

"Boss!" one of da boyz shouted, "We'ez gettin' shot up!"

Thaz started ta give da boy a good shoutin' but he neva got da chance, on account of da spike dat hit him right in da thinka box.

* * *

Dimitri watched the last Ork hit the ground and got out from behind the cover of a sun-bleached boulder. He started forward toward the tank, falling into a fast step alongside Jax. The Confederate held his Impaler with one hand, using his other to direct squad 4.

"Set up a close perimeter around this here tank! Five meter spread, if ya can." He paused to hack a wad of backed up phlegm onto the steaming sand. He pointed out one guardsman, the member of the squad entrusted with its plasma gun. "What's yer name?"

"Chernov."

"Good meetin' ya, Chernov. What's that gun of yours do?"

The guardsman looked down at his weapon. "It's a plasma gun, meant for neutralizing more heavily armored targets."

"What, like Nobs?"

"I suppose so."

"Good. I hate Nobs." Jax grinned at Dimitri. Why, the younger man had no idea. "Chernov, get yerself somewhere where you can take out any Nobs you see."

"Like on top of the tank?" Chernov asked, pointing out the most obvious vantage point.

"No, not just yet," Jax said, "We've gotta get it turned back over, first."

Dimitri saw someone move from behind the tank and into the open, saber held as if unsure what to do with it. He recognized the man immediately as Commissar Yanavich, as did the rest of the men in the squad. Yanavich was something of a legend in the 42nd, but unlike his peers in other regiments who inspired men through heroics as well as fear, Yanavich was not respected at all, nor really feared by any who had dealt with him for more than a tour or so.

Typically, his name was mentioned in reference to the horrible slaughters he notoriously led men into. In fact, were it not for his lightning quick draw, someone probably would have killed the bastard a long time ago.

"What the hell is going on?" the political officer demanded, staring directly at Jax, "Who in the Emperor's name are you?"

Jax smiled and walked over to Yanavich, hand held out to shake. "Howdy, I'm Sergeant Fred Jax."

Yanavich didn't move in for the hand shake, and he surprisingly didn't seem phased by Jax's appearance. "Well, Sergeant, would you kindly tell me what in the blazes you are doing here in the middle of my battlefield?"

Dimitri started forward, not liking where this was going.

"Well, Commissar," Jax said, starting in on a brutally honest explanation, "that big old Squiggoth knocked yer tank over, and after that the Orks circled in around the rest of yer men. Then we decided to come on in and fix the situation because of how you fucked it up." He smiled. "That's about it."

"Heretic!"

The word was in the air before Dimitri could interject and explain Jax's behavior. Time seemed to slow as Yanavich's bolt pistol, which had until this point been held at his side, started to come up toward Jax's head in the quick-draw he was famous for.

No guardsman, no matter how motivated, had ever managed to beat the Commissar's draw, and on Sengladesh Dimitri had personally witnessed the man take on two guardsmen at once, gunning down the both of them before they got shots off. But in Fred Jax, Yanavich finally met his match.

A section of Jax's right thigh armor slid aside and ejected a massive pistol into its owner's hand. Jax yanked the hand cannon up and squeezed the trigger, the blast throwing the Commissar up against the tank with enough force to snap his spine.

Yanavich dropped his bolt pistol and looked down at the tatter-edged hole the size of a dinner plate in his chest. He looked back up at Jax, eyes wide with disbelief. "I failed," he said, then slid down the plating and onto the sand, trailing blood behind him. Then he died, staring at the red that leaked down the front of his uniform.

Jax put his flak pistol back into its place, letting his armor close up around it, and turned to look at the rest of the squad. "Um, sorry?"

The guardsmen broke into fits of laughter, and Chernov at least took it upon himself to spit on the corpse.

Jax frowned in confusion. "Wait, so you guys don't like people like him?"

"No, Commissars aren't even officially part of the chain of command," Dimitri explained, "They're outsiders."

"Well, I'm an outsider," Jax said.

"But you aren't an arsehole," Dimitri countered, "Commissars, like Yanavich here, are."

"Ah," Jax said, sliding his visor into place, "Gotcha."

He highlighted Yanavich in his HUD, scanned him and entered the appropriate information into his suit's computer to recognize similarly dressed individuals as commissars. He blinked, tabbing over to the rules of engagement sheet, and filed commissars as 'Contextual Allies.'

"There we go," he muttered, mounting his Impaler on his back, "Now then, let's get this tank working!"

Dimitri looked up from where he was taking Yanavich's bolt pistol, about to ask how Jax was going to get it back upright, when the Confederate hit the high-side of the Russ with a flying body slam. The tank's hull reverberated from the powerful hit, groaned as it started to tip under Jax's weight, and then finally came down on its destroyed treads with a resounding bang.

Jax got to his feet next to the tank's turret, smacking his hands together in a 'job well done' kind of way. "Chernov, now you're up on the tank. Alright, who knows how to run this thing?"

"I can figure out the gun!" piped one of the guardsmen, "Had a little bit of gunnery training back in basic before they figured out I couldn't count good enough to figure out all the degrees and whatnot."

"Well, that ain't gonna be no problem," Jax said, giving the guardsman a helping hand up onto the tank, "The engine's busted anyway. Ain't no way the turret's gonna move by itself."

Dimitri looked up at Jax. "If that's the case, then how in His name are we to aim it?"

"Like this!" Jax reached over and grabbed the barrel with one hand, then yanked the whole turret around in line with some far off target. "See? Easier than my second cousin!"

* * *

Yanavich's eight junior commissars were dead, their bodies being used for cover by the hive-dweller conscripts that had killed them. After the Russ flipped, taking with it any semblance of military order, the group mentality of the Scum Squads went from receptive to orders to being focused on self-preservation. The commissars, with their threats and bolt pistols, stood as an obstacle to survival, and were promptly mutinied upon and murdered.

Thankfully for Rakatev, the crazed rookies didn't view his fifth company in the same light, though they had ignored every order he'd given them. In response, he ordered his men to spread out amongst the insubordinates, so that even if the Orks did wise up, they wouldn't be able to focus fire on any one point to take care of the superior fifth company men.

Presently, Rakatev jammed his chainsword into an Ork who had breached the perimeter, letting the admantium teeth dig their way through the armor and churn the contents of its chest onto the sand. The Ork died and he pulled on the sword, dislodging the stuck teeth with a wet tearing sound.

"Lang!" he shouted, ignoring the bullets whizzing past his head as he turned to the vox-man, "Raise Sergeant Jax!"

Lang, hunched down behind a boulder, didn't look away from his blocky communications equipment. "Yes sir!"

Rakatev looked across the group of nervous soldiers hunkered in the rocks around him and picked out one of his sergeants. "Yelchin, get your flamers to lay down a screen on the northern flank! Don't let those bastards see what we're doing with that Russ!"

"Yes sir!" Yelchin turned, already shouting to the two flamer-totting members of his squad.

As burning gouts of promethium lit up the northern rockslide, Rakatev looked back to Lang. "Jax?" he demanded. Lang offered up the horn and Rakatev took it, pressing it to his ear to drown out the roar of battle. "Rakatev here."

_"Hey, Lieutenant!"_ Jax's voice had a slight echo to it, the result of him speaking from within his enclosed bubble helmet. The Confederate's suit was gifted with communications equipment far beyond anything Rakatev had ever seen, somehow capable of boosting the weak vox signal to unparalleled levels of clarity. _"How's it goin' over there?"_

A hive-dweller flew past Rakatev, his chest sliced open by an axe. The Lieutenant turned and put six rounds in the lad's killer, blowing its face apart in a splash of dark red vitae. "I've had better days. Status of the tank?"

_"Gun's workin', but it ain't movin'. Engine's busted."_ In his uncovered ear, Rakatev heard a burst of Impaler fire from the north. _"You might wanna get that big old lizard to come a little closer."_

Rakatev looked out past the perimeter, spotting the Squiggoth where it rampaged through its own lines, the Orks on its back failing to direct it toward the Imperials. The creature's scaled hide and armored plates were stained with gallons of blood, a good majority of it from the ruined half of its face. "You're saying I should get that thing to come _closer?_"

_"Only,"_ Jax said, _"if you want us to hit it."_

Rakatev sighed, wishing for the millionth time since the regiment's creation that he hadn't been drafted for this job. "Fine," he said, "Get ready, Confederate. We'll get its attention."

_"Okie-dokie artichoke!"_ The line closed in a burst of static.

Rakatev handed the horn back to Lang. The vox-man looked up at him. "Well, sir? How're we supposed to get its attention?"

"That's the easy part," Rakatev answered, readying his bolt pistol, "Squiggoths are simple creatures. The real question to ask would be how we are to avoid its inevitable retaliation?" Without waiting for a reply, Rakatev thrust his chainsword into the air. "Fifth company: focus all fire on the Squiggoth!"

* * *

Strike Cruiser _Saradon_, Moving Into Low Orbit Around Dancer VI

* * *

Dirich pushed his grav harness into place over his armored chest and secured his bolter into the clamp next to him. All around his battle-brothers were doing the same, murmuring prayers as they got settled into the drop pod. Each and every man had his battle helm donned as per Dirich's orders. In the event of an emergency, he would not allow one of his men, some of whom he'd served with for the better part of a century, to die of exposure to the vacuum.

They were Astartes. Such deaths had no honor and were beneath them.

The symphony of clacks wound down into silence, and Dirich opened up a vox link. "Squad Dirich ready, Lord Inquisitor," he said, "Closing the pods. We launch on your orders."

The four doors of the pod rose up and sealed against their frames, the sound followed by Tripe's voice. _"Understood, Brother Sergeant. I need not remind you what's at stake here. Remember your rules of engagement: no unnecessary confrontation. Your purpose is retrieval."_

"With respect, Lord, I am Astartes," Dirich said, irritated by the audacity of the man to criticize him on the squad-wide band, "We remember our orders."

If Tripe had heard the note of irritation in Dirich's voice, he didn't acknowledge it, another by-product of the selective hearing the veteran sergeant was learning to expect from the Inquisitor. _"Good luck, Brother Sergeant. Tripe out."_

No sooner had the line closed than another opened, this one a secure channel between Dirich and the second drop pod. _"Retrieval, lord?"_ asked Brother Sergeant Hastrel.

"Yes." Dirich didn't say anything more, adhering to direct instructions not to divulge any information about their target, even to one so trusted as Hastrel. Having served at Dirich's side since he had been advanced from the scout company, Hastrel was one of the veteran sergeant's most trusted brothers. It would pain him greatly to lie to the man.

Thankfully, Hastrel seemed to have picked up on his mentor's predicament. _"I understand,"_ he said, then shifted his tone to a more official one, _"Squad Hastrel, ready to launch."_

The shifting apparatus of gears and servos that held the drop pod in place whirred into life, moving it and its companion across the pod bay with slow, deliberate force.

Behind his breather grille, Dirich's mouth set into a grimace as he led his men in reciting the Litany of Arial Retribution. "Through trials of fire and the furnace of war, we are forged."

"By His hand," the Marines around him intoned in unison.

"Upon the anvil of destiny, we are hammered into instruments of death."

The response was instant. "Per His design."

The rumbling ceased with a resonating clang of locking steel as the exterior clamps locked the pod into place above one of the _Saradon_'s eight massive drop shafts. Hatches opened up below them, forming a clear path all the way to the lowest decks of the strike cruiser and beyond, the emptiness of the void.

"Clothed in armor, armed with fire, we deliver retribution to the enemies of the Imperium."

"And with His blessing, we strike from the skies."

There was a tremendous roar, and the drop pods screamed down their shafts, carrying the Sons of Marathon into battle on trails of fire.

* * *

North of Fifth Company Rally Point, Planet's Surface

* * *

The Squiggoth bellowed, throwing its head into the charge as it soaked up the pin-pricks of red light that singed its hide. Fifth company, for all the ammunition it threw up at the creature, was essentially ineffective, and the men hiding amongst the boulders were being ravaged by the behemoth. Members of the Scum Squads, inexperienced in warfare, panicked and stood to run, all the better to be scythed down by the razor-sharp tusks.

Dimitri watched the slaughter from his position in the open hatch of the turret, shielding his eyes against the harsh sunlight. "They never should have been brought out of their hive lives," he muttered, "They're unprepared."

"Ya got that right," Jax agreed where he stood next to Dimitri. The Confederate grabbed the Russ's main gun and forced it around, metal screeching on metal, as he lined it up with the Ork-bred beast. "But I think we can give 'em a little support."

"Um, are you sure you can hit it with that?" Dimitri asked, "Its not like you have a firing cogitator."

Jax stopped what he was doing and frowned. "What the hell is a cock-stopper?"

"No, no, no, Jax. A _cogitator_." He stared at Jax for a moment, waiting for the moment of clarity to sweep his companion's face. It never came, and Dimitri let out a sigh. "Forget it. It's not important."

"Okay," Jax said cheerfully, "Anyway, I can hit it. They didn't call me 'Free Hand Fred' for nothing."

"Did they really call you that?"

"Nope."

* * *

A gust of wind knocked Rakatev off balance in the wake of the Squiggoth's swinging head, throwing him into a rock wall with enough force to crack his flak armor. Grunting, he pulled himself to his feet and squeezed off a barrage of shots at the monster's head, the bolts bursting against its tough flesh. In annoyance, the creature flung its head back around toward Rakatev again, tusks sparking off the stones and decapitating guardsmen as it came.

The Lieutenant ducked down in a wedge between two boulders, avoiding a slash by a hand's span, and dug his face into the dirt. In the wake of the slash, he propped himself up on one arm. "Lang, get me that gak-"

He stopped when he saw the vox-man laying next to him, whimpering between clenched teeth as he held onto the bleeding stump of his shoulder. Next to the trooper was a live frag grenade, still held in the grip of Lang's severed arm. Rakatev reached out without conscious thought and pried the grenade from still twitching fingers before hurling it out toward the nearest group of Orks he could spot.

The fuse ended and the frag went off in mid-air, hot pieces of shrapnel cutting through the air in every direction. A cluster of the shards caught Rakatev in the right side of his face as he turned away, digging into the bone of his cheek and pulping his right eye.

Screaming in pain, Rakatev dropped to the rocks beside his injured vox-man, clutching at his face. Above them, the Squiggoth reared back on its hind legs, preparing to crush them beneath its massive feet.

* * *

"Fire!" Jax shouted into the turret.

The gunner obeyed and squeezed the trigger, igniting the powder charge and sending the heavy shell screaming out of the barrel. It flew downrange straight and true, a an effect of Jax's near-perfect aim, its heated body slicing through the air with smoke streaming behind it.

The explosive gift caught the Squiggoth between its front legs and detonated, breaking ribs through the skin. With a surprised wail of pain that sounded similar to a dog's whimper, the creature stumbled backward on its hind legs and came down on all fours again, crushing a cluster of Orks underfoot.

Sensing the distraction, the hiding guardsmen stood up and cut into the confused aliens with a wall of las fire, killing a number and forcing the survivors into cover.

"Hell yeah!" Jax hooted, "Load up another one, boys! Let's bring this bastard down!"

The men around the tank and within it whooped, and at least Chernov the plasma gunner fired his weapon into the air in celebration. Dimitri glanced down into the turret and saw the loader throwing a new shell into the breech. When the bolts clamped down, he looked back to Jax and nodded.

Jax lined the gun back up with the Squiggoth, careful to aim higher toward the creature's face this time.

* * *

Rakatev, covered in a layer of thick alien blood from Jax's first shot, saw the Squiggoth duck the second shell, dodging it in a reflex action that seemed at odds with its tremendous bulk. The beast roared and brought itself around in line with the Russ, preparing for another charge.

Salvation came, as it were, straight from the skies.

A fireball shot down from the heavens, trailed by a column of fire, and smacked the Squiggoth right in its neck, ripping tendons, shattering vertebrae and dislodging the entire head from its mount. The drop pod kept going and slammed into the dirt at an angle, letting the headless Squiggoth topple behind it like so much dead meat.

A second drop pod screamed in seconds later, landing not fifty feet from the first. Rakatev pulled himself to his feet, trying his best to ignore the pain in his face and focus on the reinforcing pods. They were yellow in color, the doors trimmed with the time-honored red circle within two crescents of gold.

All at once, the doors blasted down and the Sons of Marathon Space Marines emerged, their bolters spitting righteous fury into the fray.

**Author's Note: And that's that. Thanks again for all the feedback and opinions for where this should be going, and like before, I've come to a decision out of the bunch. Soon, Jax and Dimitri (along with some other friends) will be leaving Dancer to go and join up with a rather famous chapter of the Angels of Death to help fight one of the big four races that have the potential to destroy the Imperium. It'll be fantastic.**

**However, that won't be for a few chapters, because we've got stuff to finish up before then. I figure injecting some cannon Warhammer characters into this thing couldn't hurt, so I think I'll do that. Problem is, there's about twenty-five gazillion characters to choose from! Abaddon the Despoiler, Marneus Calgar, Ursarker Creed, etc. So, here's this week's question (because this is clearly becoming a regular thing): which cannon characters would you like to see Jax interact with/fight/fight alongside/what have you? Lemme know, I need your opinions!  
**

**Please, though, no Dawn of War stuff. Story-wise, those games are dull, and the Blood Ravens are boring excuses for Space Marines.**

**Tune in next Saturday for Chapter 6 of The Confederate: Assturds and Inquisitors  
**


	6. Chapter 6: Assturds and Inquisitors

The Space Marines moved in disciplined formations, each battle-brother covering the other as they advanced into the Orks, their bolters pumping perfect bursts into alien bodies, no shot wasted and none missing. With the death of the mighty Squiggoth, the back of the alien force was broken and calls to fall back echoed from the greenskin leaders.

Veteran Sergeant Dirich, leading his squad from the front of their formation, swung his power sword in a broad arc. The razor-fine edge split armor with ease, killing anything that got within its reach in quick and economical thrusts.

"Brother Hastrel!" he voxed, "Press into their retreat and cut them down! I will work with the Guard to encircle and destroy the southern opposition!"

_"Squad Hastrel acknowledges. Ave Imperator, brother."_

"Ave Imperator." Dirich closed the line and looked back to his squad. "To the south, brothers! Push!"

The squad changed directions in a heartbeat and pushed into the southern Orks.

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 6: Assturds and Inquisitors_

* * *

"Oh, now I'm pissed," Jax fumed.

"The Space Marines helped us kill the Squiggoth, so you're mad at them?" Dimitri shook his head. "That doesn't make sense."

"It don't matter if they helped, Dimitri," Jax said, jumping down from the tank, "They took my kill. I woulda had that lizard if we'd hit it just one more time."

Dimitri followed him down, hitting the earth with an impact that jarred his legs and made him envy Jax's power armor. "Yes. Or it would have come over here and ripped us apart."

"You don't know that." Jax motioned for the rest of the squad to follow him. "Chernov, everybody, come on! We're leavin' this hunk of shit behind!" He thudded on the Leman Russ for emphasis.

"Well you don't know if we could have hit the Squiggoth again or not," Dimitri pointed out. "That's why we should accept the assistance."

"They stole my kill," Jax repeated. "Everything else is beside the point. This here's 'bout honor."

Dimitri raised his eyebrows. "Honor, huh?"

Jax nodded. "Damn right."

"Well then, I'm sure they'll understand."

* * *

Rakatev pulled his attention away from where the Space Marines were massacring the Orks to focus on the situation of his own men, more specifically that of his vox-man. Lang was lying next to him, jerking in pained spasms at the loss of his right arm.

"Medic!" Rakatev shouted. Forcing to work through the agony that the hot shrapnel in his face was inducing, Rakatev moved to Lang. He shoved one of his gloved hands into the stump to staunch the blood flow while working with the other to keep the younger man conscious and focused by slapping him on the cheeks. "Lang, look at me!"

Lang's boots kicked against the worn stone beneath him, muscles bucking reflexively in a vain attempt to divert the pain. He whimpered and bit into his own hand, but looked up at Rakatev.

Seeing that he had the younger man's attention, Rakatev started talking. "You're gonna be okay, lad. I've got a medic coming, this won't be so bad." Rakatev looked up and with his remaining eye spotted Corporal Shapko, one of the company's two designated medics, sliding down a boulder toward them. "And here he is."

Shapko landed next to them and set down the canvas rucksack that contained his medical supplies. As he unpacked a series of bottles, syringes and bandages, he turned to Rakatev. "You want a dressing for that, sir?"

"I'm fine!" Rakatev lied. He stabbed a finger at Lang. "Fix him, not me!"

Without another word, Shapko went to work, drawing out a syringe full of morphine.

Lang tried to look at the medic, but Rakatev stopped him with a double-handed grip on his face. "Don't look at him, laddie, look at me," he said, careful to keep his tone gruff. Lang had been his vox-man since the regiment was founded, and through all the fighting he'd become more like a son to Rakatev than his biological one back on Marathon. He wouldn't let the kid die here.

Lang's eyes focused on Rakatev as the needle sank into a vein on his remaining arm, and despite all the pain evident in his face, the vox-man managed to speak. "Sir," he said, the noise a harsh croak, "I'm gonna die."

"No, you're not. Shapko here is going to stop the bleeding." Rakatev watched the medic reach across Lang's body to start wrapping his stumped shoulder in bandages. "You're going to be fine."

Lang shook his head. "No, I'm gonna die. I just know it, sir. I just know I'm gonna die here…"

Rakatev ignored Lang and grabbed Shapko by the shoulder. "Isn't it true that blood flows slower when you're unconscious?"

"Yes sir."

Without another thought, Rakatev punched Lang in the nose, sending a burst of stars across the younger man's vision and knocking his head against the rock. Lang's eyes fluttered shut.

"Hey, I stopped the bleeding!" Shapko chirped.

"Great," Rakatev muttered, falling back on his rear in exhaustion. He leaned against a boulder and looked down at himself. Blood ran down the front of his uniform, pooling between the plates of flak armor. He ran a tentative hand across the ruined half of his face, probing the puckered remains of his eye, then wincing from the irritation. "When you get the chance, Shapko, give me a dressing."

Shapko looked up from Lang's inert form. "I thought you said you were fine, Lieutenant."

"I lied."

A shadow fell across them. Looking up, Rakatev spotted the silhouette of a Space Marine standing on one of the rocks.

"Are you the commanding officer of these guardsmen?" the Astartes demanded, the voice resonating from the breathe grille like the echo of distant artillery.

"Yes," Rakatev replied, letting Shapko start digging the shrapnel from his face with a pair of tweezers. No sedative had been applied, and he winced at each movement of the instrument. He was only able to force the pain from his mind with great effort. "You'll have to forgive me for not standing to greet you, Lord Astartes. It's been a long day."

"So I see."

The Space Marine scanned the jumble of rocks around him, no doubt looking at the men assembled in a rough defense; his head moved like he was speaking, most likely on a secure vox-channel with the rest of his battle-brothers.

After a moment, the eyes of the helmet swung back around to Rakatev. "We have taken care of your Ork problem."

Abruptly, the Marine pulled off his helmet, exposing a strong face that could have been chiseled from marble. His head was bald, and his brow was augmented by two metal studs above his right eye.

"I am Veteran Sergeant Dirich of the Sons of Marathon," he said, piercing blue eyes boring into Rakatev's lone brown one, "Tell me, guardsman, has your company been in contact with any strange individuals?"

An image of Jax shot to the forefront of Rakatev's mind. "Yes, we have."

Dirich had just started to reply when a fist of white steel connected with his jaw. Jax followed the punch through, throwing his superior weight into it and knocking the Space Marine off balance.

"Son of a bitch!" the Confederate shouted, "Come on, get up so I can hit ya again!"

Dirich caught himself on a boulder and sprang back at Jax, clearing the ground and smashing into the Confederate's chest. Both men fell to the ground, breaking rock under their combined weight as they tumbled down onto the desert hardpan in a mess of punches, kicks and florid curses.

* * *

"Yeah, Jax!" Chernov shouted, "Show him how we do things in the Guard!"

Dimitri shot the plasma gunner a glare to silence him, then turned back to where Jax and Dirich were engaged in a brawl, intent upon separating the two.

Both of them were on the ground, kicking up a storm of dirt as they tried to jockey for an advantage in the confines of a close-quarters fist fight. Dirich's power sword had gone flying at the onset of the fight, ending up lodged in the ground a few yards away, and in the middle of the fight, he tried to get up and retrieve the weapon.

Jax reached out and grabbed the Space Marine by the ankle, then pulled him back to the ground. He steadied the Veteran Sergeant with one hand while he punched dent after dent into the Aquilla armor's breastplate. "You fucking took my kill!" he shouted, delivering a hit that shattered the purity seal emblazoned across the Son of Marathon's collar.

"I have done no such thing!" Dirich roared, wedging his feet beneath Jax's diaphragm and pushed him away and holding the Confederate at leg-length as he readied his bolter.

Jax reacted fast, wrapping both hands around Dirich's legs and throwing him like a half-ton sack of potatoes. The Space Marine flew ten feet and smashed face-first into a boulder, the stone cracking in a spider web pattern.

Dimitri took the opportunity and jumped between the men, holding his arms up to stop them from continuing. As Dirich hauled himself to his feet and Jax started forward, Dimitri felt strangely like the meat of a sandwich, and was painfully aware of how near he was to being squished into paste.

"Jax, stop it!" he shouted. The Confederate slowed to a halt, his hands still held ready for a fight. Dimitri looked to the Space Marine. "Brother-Sergeant, if you will permit me, I can explain his behavior."

Dirich snatched his power sword from the ground and swung it once, dislodging the dirt from its blood lines. As the rest of his Space Marines closed in around them, he waved them off. "You have ten seconds."

Dimitri nodded in thanks. "Lord Astartes-"

"Don't make fun of him, Dimitri!"

"-Sergeant Jax is an off-world mercenary from the Cetrius system. Honor is very important in his culture. We were about to destroy the Squiggoth before your arrival dispatched it, and as such you have soiled his honor by…um…'stealing his kill'. So as you can see, Lord, he did not attack you with intent to kill, but merely to enact a duel according to his people's customs."

Dimitri wanted to pat himself on the back for how easily he had pulled that out of his rear end. Cetrius wasn't a star system, at least not that he knew of. It was, however, the name of a sister instructor from the Schola Prognegium education center he had attended as a youth. He'd delivered it convincingly, though. Maybe this had a chance of working after all.

Dirich's expression didn't change. "Cetrius system," he said, looking past Dimitri to Jax, "Is that where you hail from, mercenary?"

"Yup," Jax said, "Born and raised."

"Pronounce it."

Jax frowned. "Come again?"

"The name of your home system," Dirich explained, "Pronounce it."

"Uh, Celery?"

And there went the plan's chances of working. Dimitri, despite the slim hope that he could salvage the situation, face palmed.

Dirich, for his part, smiled. "For stealing your kill," he said, waving down the weapons his battle-brothers had leveled with Dimitri and Jax, "you have my deepest apologies. It is not the place of the Sons of Marathon to dishonor another warrior." He picked his helm up and shook out the collected pound of sand before donning it. "Now, if you'll wait here, I'll be calling my superior."

As the Veteran Sergeant walked away toward one of the drop pods, Jax leaned in to Dimitri, and in a harsh whisper said, "I woulda had him, you know."

"Oh, would you stop it with that?" Dimitri groaned.

"C'mon! That guy fights like my grandma!"

Dimitri idly pondered that she must have been a very strong woman. He also reasoned that based on how strong her grandson was it was extremely possible that Grandma Jax could have beaten an Ork. Wherever Jax really did come from had to be a very violent place indeed.

He was pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of Jax's high tech vox equipment squeaking and whirring as he tuned into a channel. Dimitri looked at Jax and then to Dirich, who was using the drop pod's orbital relay equipment to communicate with his nameless superior, who was no doubt in a strike cruiser high above.

Awareness, as it often did, kicked him in the face. "Throne, Jax! Are you eavesdropping?"

Jax looked down at Dimitri like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Um, no," he said, shutting his visor, "Must be interference or somethin'."

* * *

Strike Cruiser _Saradon_'s Hanger, High Orbit

* * *

Alexander Tripe wasn't with the Ordo Xenos, though had worked under their banner for a good twenty years as a younger man. He went through his apprenticeship there under Inquisitor Algernon, a man whose singular focus on unraveling the mysteries of the Eldar had resulted in the deaths of many acolytes over the years. In the end, that research cost Algernon his sanity and Tripe had been forced to kill him.

After his promotion to full Inquisitor, Tripe continued the research of his deceased mentor. He eventually uncovered the craft listings and location of a wraithship flotilla in the Segmentum Pacificus, knowledge that was used to great effect by the Imperial Navy.

He was on-site for the ensuing space battle, watching from the bridge of the Lord Admiral's flagship as the delicate Eldar craft were destroyed under salvo after salvo of concentrated las barrages. That had been the single most gratifying moment of Tripe's life, and he remembered thinking that nothing in the galaxy could be as fantastic as seeing the xeno witches burn in a storm of purifying fire.

And then he was inducted into the Ordo Secretes, and that achievement seemed like child's play. Literally Order of the Secret in High Gothic, the Secretes was a specialized branch of the Inquisition based on Holy Terra and dedicated to the preservation and understanding the greatest of Imperial secrets.

Given his background in understanding seemingly incomprehensible plans, Tripe had been brought onto the team.

That had been one hundred years ago, when Tripe was but thirty-five years of age. In all that time, he and his comrades had toiled endlessly. They eventually unraveled the biggest secret of the Ordo's existence; a secret that culminated here, on this backwater planet, in this unremarkable sector.

Tripe had waited a century for this day, so when Dirich's call came through, he was already at his personal ship's vox console.

"Speak," he ordered.

_"We have located the target, Inquisitor,"_ the Space Marine reported. _"He fits the specified parameters exactly, right down to the poor pronunciation. His combat abilities are…impressive."_

Dirich sounded odd, as if his jaw was broken. Tripe didn't care and went on to give his instructions, careful to keep the edge of excitement from his voice. "Keep the area contained, Sergeant. I'm coming down."

* * *

Fifth Company's Rally Point, The Surface

* * *

Dirich disconnected his battle helm from the orbital vox relay and turned from the drop pod to his second in command. "He's coming down. Set up a perimeter and clear a landing zone. Don't let anything in or out of this area."

"Understood," Hastrel said, turning to get to work.

Thirty feet away, Jax retracted his visor and let out a breath. Dimitri stood from where he was re-lacing a boot that had come undone during the fighting and looked back at his companion.

"What did you learn?" he asked.

Jax shrugged. "The Assturd told somebody called Inquisitor that they found some guy. Said he could fight good but couldn't talk for shit. Then Inquisitor said he's on his way." Jax paused. "Hey, what's an Inquisitor?"

At that moment, Dimitri Vlasna knew he was going to die. He had realized early on that someone would come for Jax eventually. The big man just drew to much attention. Dimitri had assumed that it would be someone from the Adeptus Mechanicus to take the high-tech armor he wore, or someone from the Ecclesiarchy to reeducate him in the ways of the Emperor.

But the Inquisition? Now they were certainly dead.

"Inquisitors work to hunt down aliens, heretics and mutants and bring them the Emperor's justice," Dimitri found himself answering from memory, "They are well funded and answer to no one, giving them the resources and leniency to do whatever they want."

"Huh?"

"They're bad news," Dimitri said, running through the different ways he would die. He'd be shot in the head, or ripped apart by one of the Space Marines, or executed by firing squad, or tortured to death, or hanged, or transferred to a penal legion, or fed to a captive Ork, or fed to the hive-dwellers…

Jax laughed. "Sucks to be the guy he's looking for! Could you imagine that, Dimitri?" The Confederate clapped his buddy on the shoulder, the force of it knocking him to the dirt.

Laying there looking up into the cloudless blue sky, Dimitri sighed, wondering for the thousandth time since he met Jax just what offense to the Emperor he was being punished for.

* * *

42nd Marathon Regiment HQ, Sakarnos Hive

* * *

An army is like a machine, made up of various cogs and gears that when operating at optimal efficiency, work in harmony to keep the greater whole on course. Like all machines it requires fuel, and to an army, that fuel is information; information passed up and down the chain of command in the form of vox calls, letters, verbal reports and loads of paperwork.

And presently, the 42nd Marathon Regiment's fuel lines were running painfully slow.

To Colonel Lementa this wasn't a surprise. The regiment's officers were very slow to report actions, a fact that he had resigned himself to long ago. He found himself at the HQ window, as he often did during times of waiting, looking out across the badlands and biding his time until his command staff figured out what the hell was going on.

He heard footsteps and knew without looking that Kamarov was at his back. "Any word from Argnos?" he asked.

"No," replied his tactical advisor. "Is it possible that the Orks killed them all?"

Lementa shook his head. "Fifth company is Lieutenant Rakatev's unit. They're the only good bunch of soldiers in this pathetic regiment. That's why I put him there. Argnos is crucial. He'll hold it."

Kamarov, wisely, didn't press the issue. He'd served with Lementa too long to make the mistake of questioning the Colonel's leadership.

"And what about Yanavich?" he asked instead. "Will he make it out alive?"

"Probably not." Lementa turned from the window and leveled his gaze with Kamarov. "Did we get any further word from the _St. Timov_?"

Kamarov nodded. "Yes. It seems as though the Astartes strike cruiser has deployed two drop pods to the surface, apparently to fifth company's battle zone, though they've yet to make any form of contact either us or the _Timov_."

"And the chapter? Is it the Sons?" Lementa pressed.

"The _Timov_ says yes," Kamarov said, consulting a dataslate as he spoke. "Its hull construction marks it as the _Saradon_, a vessel previously committed to the Novaguard Crusade under a Brother-Captain Pontius."

"Then we have our reinforcements."

Lementa clapped his hands together, his mind already working out just how he was going to finish this war. Unlike he had predicted, the Orks had not attempted to take Utnos. Instead, it seemed as though the greenskin offensive was only directed at Argnos. If such was the case, then Narkull had just adopted a major doctrinal shift, going from an offensive stance to a defensive stance, thus giving Lementa the opportunity to launch a counter-attack.

Normally, attacking with just one regiment against an unknown amount of foes was not advisable. But with Space Marines on his side…

* * *

Fifth Company's Rally Point

* * *

Dimitri tracked the descending ship from his position on the ground, following it with the eyes of a man watching the inevitable approach of his death. He watched it as it grew from a black spot in the blue sky to a block of thick, jet-black steel jetting plumes of flame to slow its descent. The ship was slightly bigger than an Astartes Thunderhawk, its flanks adorned with the stylized 'I' of the Emperor's Holy Inquisition.

It sat down in the middle of an area that the Sons of Marathon had cleared of Ork bodies and battle debris, its retros fanning waves of dirt across the assembled guardsmen. Jax, sitting next to Dimitri on a boulder, watched the ship's landing process from behind his polarized visor, no doubt scrutinizing its every movement.

"What in the warp is that?"

Dimitri looked back at the rock slide in time to see Lieutenant Rakatev stride up to him. Lang wasn't far behind, lugging a destroyed vox-box over one shoulder, the stump of his other arm bandaged with enough white cloth to choke a horse. Rakatev was staring at him, clearly wanting and explanation.

"An Inquisitor, sir," he managed, pulling himself to his feet, "seems like he wants to talk with you know who. What happened to your eye?"

Rakatev waved off the question. "Disagreement with a frag grenade. What's an Inquisitor want with Jax?"

At this, Jax looked over from his perch on the boulder and retracted his visor. "Who the hell said he wanted me?"

"Who do you think they were referring to in that communication, Jax?" Dimitri asked.

"Maybe-"

Dimitri cut him off, "They were talking about you."

"I dunno," Jax said, "I thought they were-"

"You," Dimitri repeated. "They were talking about you. No one else. Just you."

Jax frowned and went back to examining the landed ship, which by now was shutting down its engines and allowing the Space Marines to take up patrolling positions around its exterior.

Dimitri pulled his attention back to Rakatev, aware that there was still a question unanswered and said, "I'm not sure, sir. But you have to admit he is a little out of the normal."

The Lieutenant grimaced. "That he is, Vlasna. Will you stand with him if the shite hits the fan with this Inquisitor?"

Dimitri cast a glance back at the bulky marine, considering the fact that never before in his life had he met someone so upbeat and unswervingly accepting as Jax. As someone who had never been very popular, Dimitri had never counted himself worthy of knowing many people. It was pretty clear to him where his loyalties lay.

After a moment he nodded. "He's my only friend, sir."

"I understand. There're few things we can count on in this life. One's a good friend, the other a lasgun." Rakatev's expression softened as he continued. "In that case, you both can count on the support of fifth company. The boys like him too much to see some Inquisitorial bastard mess him over."

Dimitri brought his sore muscles to attention. "Thank you, Lieutenant."

"Think nothing of it," Rakatev said, patting Dimitri on the shoulder. "Just be careful."

Veteran Sergeant Dirich and three more Space Marines marched up to their position, bolters somewhere between pointing in threat and held at ease. Dirich narrowed his eyes at Jax as he spoke.

"Confederate, the Inquisitor will see you in his ship."

"No," Jax said, his suit whirring as he got to his feet.

Dimitri started forward, seeing the need for further intervention, but halted when a Space Marine stepped in front of him, bolter leveled at his chest. The super soldier's face was hidden behind his helmet, but the scowling features of it's breathe grille and narrowed eye-slits conveyed enough menace as it was.

"I'm sorry, I suppose I didn't hear you correctly," Dirich said. "It sounded as if you just denied the order of one who speaks for an agent of the Emperor's Holy Inquisition."

"Damn right I did," Jax said, stepping toe-to-toe with the Space Marine. His white CMC armor was as big as a Terminator's and topped him out at a full head higher than the Veteran Sergeant, making him look down at the Angel of Death. "If he's got to say somethin' to me, he can say it in front of these here guardsman. Your Inquisitor boy seems like a shady character, and my mama told me to never do backroom deals. You tell him if he wants to talk, he better just come on out."

Dimitri fought the urge to make a grab for the lasrifle on his back, knowing that any movement he made would be cut short when the walking slab of armor and muscle in front of him burst his torso with a mass-reactive bolt. He forced himself to watch, in agony, as Dirich and Jax stared each other down.

In the end, Dirich broke eye contact first as he turned away to speak into an earpiece.

"Yes?" he said. Someone on the other end spoke, and by the expression on Dirich's face, the words were not to his liking. After a moment, he barked a quick 'affirmative' and disengaged the earpiece. "Very well, Confederate, the Inquisitor will agree to your terms."

"Good," Jax said, his eyes having not left the older warrior for the duration of the private conversation.

Dirich looked away and started back toward the ship, his battle-brothers following in behind him, no doubt acting on orders. The Space Marine that had been in Dimitri's way broke away with obvious reluctance. The disappointment evident in the armored figure's stride was unnerving.

"Well, Lieutenant, will you still stand with us?" Dimitri asked.

Rakatev didn't reply, instead resting one hand on his the hilt of his chainsword. Dimitri took that as a yes and went to stand next to Jax.

The big man was readying his rifle for a fight, checking the bolt's clearance and the interior of his helmet was lit up with symbols as the targeting system ran through a checklist.

"How much more ammo do you have for that?"

"Three magazines," Jax said, then added, "counting this one."

"What can you do with that?"

"If I'm quick enough, I can probably get at least two of these Assturds before they get back at us. Then it's anyone's guess." Jax shrugged. "They're pretty hardcore mother fuckers."

Dimitri laughed. "You looked like you were enjoying yourself fighting Dirich."

"Yup," Jax admitted. "He's a jackass, but I haven't had a fight like that since I got into it with this one Protoss back on Tarsonis. Now _that _was a hell of a fist-fight."

"Yeah," Dimitri said. Then he caught himself.

What the hell was a Protoss? Where the hell was Tarsonis? Suddenly, Dimitri found himself not caring whether or not the ship in front of him carried death itself. Jax was talking about his origins, damnit, and that took precedent over everything.

Jax was still going on like nothing was amiss. "They were fast ones, those Protoss. They could take a ton of fire, what with the shields they had, and half the time you couldn't even hit the sons of bitches on account of how they danced out of the way when you shot at 'em. But I learned how to take 'em down up close."

"How?" Dimitri asked, not willing to interject more in fear of losing this thread of conversation.

"Easy," Jax said. "I just got right up in their face, right where they would start to do those quick little fag-steps, and then stick 'em." As if to emphasize his point, a two-foot long serrated bayonet emerged from the front of his Impaler. "Then beat 'em with a couple of good punches and a kick to the head, they'd go down fine."

Dimitri started to press him with another question when a ramp on the ship lowered. A billowing cloud of steam wafted out from the interior of the black craft, hissing in the hot, dry climate. Then a man emerged, adorned in the finery of an Inquisitor: black war coat, armored chest piece, heavy duty boots and a leather gloves. His black hair was pulled back into a long ponytail and a power sword dangled from one hip, opposite an ornate plasma pistol engraved with litanies in High Gothic.

As the Inquisitor got closer, Dimitri could make out his piercing, hawk-like eyes as they flicked across the assembled guardsmen, examining each in quick glances. The man's eyes found Dimitri and in and he felt himself being visually dissected as the Inquisitor's gaze cut down to his core in an instant. At the feeling, Dimitri shuddered in his flak armor.

Then the feeling was gone as the man brought his gaze down on Jax. The big man didn't even flinch, and simply stared back. There was an obnoxious beep as Jax's armor scanned and catalogued the Inquisitor, then a full minute of tense silence.

Finally, the Inquisitor broke the quiet. "I am Alexander Tripe of the Inquisition, Ordo Secretes." The man's mouth split into a thin, strange grin that revealed a row of perfect teeth. "I've waited a very long time to meet you, Fred Jax."

**Author's Note: Okay, so maybe two weeks late at 2am on a Thursday isn't _exactly_ the best way to keep up with my updating schedule, but hey, I've been busy. I won't bore you with an in-depth excuse, so here's four quick ones:**

**1: It's winter break. 2: There's been a hell of a snow storm where I live. 3: Some power lines came down, so the internet service wasn't working for about a week. Not to mention my laptop ran out of power... 4: We've had family over (shudder). **

**So, sorry it took a bit, but there you have it: Chapter 6, complete with a cliffhanger, a habit that I've decided to give up kicking. Hey, you gotta know your limits, right?**

**No question this week, since I've got things lined up for a little bit, though I'll have one next time. I'll try to have another chapter up on Saturday to make up for the lost time, but until then, just tell me what you thought of this one.**

**Later.  
**


	7. Chapter 7: Truths

"Which wun o' ya grot-herders is Gort?"

Gort Malog Gragnatz da Flash Git looked up from his Snazzgun and caught sight of the Ork standing at the door to his mob's hut. He opened his mouth to shout at the boy for disturbing the delicate process of dunking his whole damn rifle in a fresh coat of red paint when he recognized the three scratch marks on the boy's chest piece, marking the Ork as one of Narkull's messengers.

"I'z Gort," he said. "Whadda ya want?"

"Da Boss wantsa talk to ya, so git ya stuff and come on!"

Gort stood from his spot on the floor and snapped his gun's housing back in place with a thump of his meaty fist. "Dis'd betta be good," he grumbled, heading for the door.

"Hey, git a look at Gort!" hollered one of the shooter boys at the back of the hut, "He's gotta go kiss da Boss's arse!"

The rest of the boys in the hut roared with laughter. Anger welling up inside him, Gort whipped around and sprayed the offending boy with a burst of heavy caliber slugs from his Snazzgun. The rounds exploded on impact, shearing off limbs and pulping the Ork's head in a gush of gory skull chunks. As the ruined corpse hit the ground, the laughter increased, and hand-to-hand weapons came out for a good old fashioned brawl.

His anger subsiding as fast as it had come, Gort turned and pushed his way out of the hut. Outside, Emperor Square was a mess, with buildings laying in piles of rubble and the bodies of dead humans impaled on long sticks. Per the Boss's orders, the entire warband had moved up to Thantos Hive the night before, and already the upper levels were being fortified by Gretchin slaves.

Every mob had its own hut, and the entire plaza was covered in a spread of canvas tents. Wood and steel guard towers were springing up at random intervals throughout the camp, topped by Gretchin manning big shooters, and the stench of burning meat wafted into the air, carried along by plumes of cooking smoke.

"Well, 'urry up!" snarled the messenger.

Without protest, Gort followed the smaller Ork across the Square, passing by several groups going about their daily duties: mekboyz repairing vehicles, slugga boyz beating each other with clubs, and a mad dok pulling out a screaming human's intestines via the mouth.

At this last sight, Gort halted. He watched the mad dok at work and as he did so, felt something tingle at the edge of his consciousness. He had experienced the sensation before when he saw humans being killed, but lately it had become more frequent. And he'd started seeing things.

Stars burst across his vision and Gort was inside a dark room, lit only by small fires around its perimeter. He tried to move, but his hands hit a pane of glass. He railed against the obstruction, but made no progress, his movements slowed by the liquid that encased him. He opened his mouth to roar, and choked on the thick substance as it rushed down his throat.

"Hey, Gort! There a problem?"

The words snapped Gort out of his own head and he was back in the real world, watching the mad dok as it continued on to the human's exposed brain, readying a rusty hook to pull the pink lump out.

"Nuthin's da problem," Gort said, shaking the after image of his vision away.

The messenger Ork seemed content with his answer. "Ok din. Let's git dis done wit."

Gort followed the smaller Ork across the Square without another word. He didn't know what the vision meant and told himself that it must have been the result of some bad brew, though he knew the excuse to be false even as he thought it up. These things meant something, he was sure of it, and he was determined to find out.

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 7: Truths  
_

* * *

Fifth Company Rally Point, Dancer VI

* * *

Silence fell across the assembly of guardsmen and Astartes in the wake of Tripe's words. The men of fifth company gripped their lasguns with white knuckles, and the Marines of the Sons of Marathon snapped their bolters into ready stances. Dimitri heard a click and a growl from behind him and knew without looking that Lieutenant Rakatev's chainsword was up and running.

The Inquisitor held his gaze on Jax's face, mouth still set in a half-grin, as if he was oblivious to the tension around him.

"You see, Jax, my colleagues and I have known about you for a long time, possibly even longer than you've been alive. We know who you are. We know virtually everything about you, yes, but more importantly, we know what you will become, what you were meant to be." Tripe's grin grew. "Even if you don't."

Dimitri watched Jax carefully, seeing his friend's fingers as they drummed on the side of his Impaler. His eyes narrowed, and for one of the few times since Dimitri had met him, Jax was clearly thinking.

Finally, the Confederate formed a response. "You know everything about me?" he asked.

Tripe nodded, clearly sure of himself.

"Okay," Jax said, "what's my favorite animal?"

At this, Tripe's cocksure grin vanished. "Excuse me?"

"You said you knew everything about me," Jax said, "so, what's my favorite animal?"

"Now Jax, I think you are missing the point of what-"

"Favorite animal!" Jax shouted. "Now!"

"Uh, dog."

"Aha!" The big man pointed accusingly at the Inquisitor. "Wrong! I don't have a favorite animal! You don't know shit about me!"

Chuckles rose up from the surrounding guardsmen, and at least one of the Sons of Marathon let out a snort of laughter before he was silenced by a glare from Sergeant Dirich.

Tripe, however, didn't seem the least bit amused.

"Jax, I believe you are missing the point," he said. "I said we know _virtually_ everything about you. The Apocrypha isn't very specific."

Jax frowned. "What's an asshole got to do with anything?"

At this, Tripe seemed to give up and turned to Dimitri. "You, guardsman. By your stance and position I would wager that you've had the most experience in this particular area," he said, pointing to Jax.

Dimitri nodded, knowing how much of an understatement that was. "Uh, yes sir."

"Then could you enlighten me as to just what he's talking about?"

"Hm?" Dimitri said, not getting it at first. Then parts of his brain snapped together and he got on with it. "Oh! You mean the arsehole thing."

Tripe nodded. "Yes. That."

"I can explain. See, sometimes Jax gets a little confused with words, especially when High Gothic is involved. I know you said Apocrypha, but Jax heard arsehole."

Jax groaned. "Then I heard right! He said asshole, I heard asshole!"

Dimitri sighed. "See?"

"Yes," Tripe replied, tapping one finger to his chin in thought, "so odd that a reborn saint cannot understand High Gothic."

Rakatev, having just downed a gulp of water from his canteen, choked it back up. "Say what?" he managed to sputter.

Dimitri suddenly felt light headed. Not wanting to pass out in the face of this revelation he spun around, snatched Rakatev's canteen and chugged half of it in one go.

Over at the Inquisitor's ship Dirich spat a globule of phlegm in the dirt. "This has to be a mistake."

His blasphemous comment went unnoticed by his battle-brothers, all of whom were too busy bowing and making the sign of the Aquilla in honor of the newly acclaimed saint.

"He does seem a little unlikely to be so blessed by the God-Emperor, but I assure you that he is just that." Tripe stepped closer to Jax, craning his neck to see into the domed helmet. "You were destined to be here, Jax. Your coming was foretold millennia ago, the culmination of a thousand events to bring about your resurrection."

By the look on his face, Jax clearly didn't believe a word of it. "What're you talkin' about?"

Tripe motioned to his ship. "Come with me and I'll show you."

* * *

Emperor Square, Thantos Hive

* * *

Gort picked his nose as Warboss Narkull grabbed the messenger around the throat and slammed the lowly Ork's head into a stone pillar, breaking the runt's skull and killing him in an instant. Narkull roared and threw the corpse out the window where it spiraled down, arms and legs flailing, toward the city below.

"An' dat's wut ya git fer gittin moufy wit me!" the Boss bellowed at the long gone corpse. He slammed his weapon, a massive power claw welded onto the remains of his right arm, into the blood-spattered marble floor and broke a fissure along it the size of a human tank.

Gort examined the lump of gunk that he'd mined from his nostril and popped it in his mouth without another thought, chewing it over as he waited for the Boss to calm down.

Not that he minded Narkull's little rages—especially since this last one had ended in the death of that grot-herding messenger—but standing around was getting a bit boring, and Gort could already see a spot on his Snazzgun where the old paint was shining through. And the new coat was already seeming old to him…

"Gort, ya ruff an' tumble flash git, wutcha fink 'bout da new place?" Narkull asked, gesturing out the vast windows at the smaller spires around them and, far below, the Ork-swamped city itself.

"Oi, it's a real snazzy place, Boss," Gort said.

Narkull laughed, though Gort wasn't quite sure why. He hadn't been all that funny.

"Ya know why we'ez mov'd on up 'ere?"

Gort scratched his head, playing like he didn't know. "Nah. Why, Boss?"

"Frum up 'ere in dis hive, we'ez gonna be able ta draw da humies in real easy like," Narkull said, "Din, when dey ain't lookin', we can crush 'em like da weakin's dey are."

At that, Narkull burst into another fit of raucous laughter, though yet again Gort wasn't really sure what had been funny, especially since they were talking about killing humans, and that always seemed kind of not fun to Gort. He much preferred fighting something else, like the Chaos boys, for instance.

"Yeah, Boss," Gort said, not bothering to mention that any useless git could figure out that plan, "Dem humies won't know wut hit 'em! Put me shoota boyz on dim towers by da main doors."

Narkull suddenly stopped laughing. "You tellin' _me_ wut ta do!?" the Warboss roared, pounding his boots into the ground, "I'z da wun wit da plans 'round 'ere! You don't be tellin' me how ta run me boyz! Dis 'ere is my Waaagh!, an' don't ya forgit it!"

"Ya, Boss. I know, Boss," Gort said. "You'z da boss, Boss."

Narkull calmed down again. "Wuteva. Jus' git ya boyz over in dim towers and wut not by da doors. Be ready ta giv 'em plenty o' dakka when dey come in 'ere."

"I'm on it, Boss!" Gort said. With that, he left the spire and didn't look back.

* * *

Fifth Company Rally Point, Inquisitor Tripe's Personal Landing Shuttle

* * *

"_They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give themselves to me. Like clay I shall mould them and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. They will have tactics, strategies and machines such that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear."_

Tripe turned from the display. "Do you recognize this?"

"No," Jax said, his helmet beeping as he took a scan of the image, "What is it?"

Dimitri stood next to Jax, his eyes still adjusting to the darkness of the interior of the Inquisitor's ship. Most of the space was taken up by the lounge they were now in, a stateroom of sorts decked out in lush carpet and fine, stained-oak bookshelves piled with dusty tomes.

The issue of his admittance into this meeting had been brought up swiftly by Veteran Sergeant Dirich, but Tripe silenced the Space Marine with a glare. For whatever reason, Tripe seemed to feel it important that Dimitri was here for the ensuing discussion.

Whatever his figuring, Dimitri didn't argue with him. The alternatives were to various and potentially fatal to think about. Besides, Jax as a saint was just too ludicrous an idea to believe without proof.

"It's a quote by the Emperor," Dimitri said. "He was speaking about the creation of the original Astartes Legions."

"Correct, Guardsman Vlasna," Tripe agreed, "I'm beginning to wonder how you learned all of this."

"I read a lot as a kid."

Jax snorted. "That's dumb."

"You only say that because you can't read," Dimitri shot back.

"I can too read!" Jax protested, "It aren't that hard!"

Tripe went on, choosing to ignore their spat, gesturing at the image on the screen. "This is a pict capture of the original slate the words were inscribed upon. It's a piece of bedrock taken directly from the crust of Holy Terra itself, dating back before the Great Crusade. It is one of seven of its kind, each one written by the Emperor Himself, and each pertaining to a different aspect of what eventually became His Imperium."

"Wow," Jax yawned, "Cool."

Though Dimitri felt the sudden urge to punch Jax in the face, Tripe seemed to control himself very well. "Jax, if you would kindly pay attention, this next part concerns you."

"I'm paying attention," Jax said, letting his visor slide down over his eyes.

Seeing where that was going, Dimitri reached over and forced it back up into a locking position. "No sleeping."

Jax glared at him but Tripe kept going, drawing their attention back to the screen.

"Now, when the slate is rotated onto its face, we can see its real purpose," Tripe explained.

The back of the slab flashed up before them, its surface lined by a grid, each line of which was so small that in some places, it all seemed to blur together. Tripe tapped a command into a brass-knobbed box beside the screen and the image peeled away to show the lines up close, each one now easily made out to be what it was.

"Words," Dimitri breathed.

"Sort of," Tripe said, "These interlocking lines of runes are on the back of each of the seven slabs, scratched into the rock during the final days preceding the Emperor's ascension to the Golden Throne. Together, the inscriptions are referred to as the Apocrypha Imperator. It is the most important collection of knowledge in the galaxy, even before the tenants described on the tablet's more visible faces."

Jax harrumphed. "Well, what's it all mean?"

Tripe fixed Jax with his cold eyes. "And that is the question my Ordo has worked an eternity to answer. The Apocrypha was created by the Emperor as He used His considerable powers to divine the future, letting the information received guide His strokes. Unfortunately, the result of this was that the Apocrypha was written in a kind of riddle."

"So, the purpose of your Ordo is to decrypt it," Dimitri muttered.

Tripe nodded. "Yes, and we have had much success over the years. Our work has helped to predict several events that otherwise would have undone the Imperium. Several of the Despoiler's Black Crusades, the rise of the necrons, the Armageddon wars, even the appearance of Hive Fleet Kraken, all foretold by the Apocrypha."

"Then what's any of this gotta do with me?" Jax asked, "Did your asshole say somethin' about me?"

Tripe hit another button and the screen flickered, this time showing another quote overlaid atop the Apocrypha slate. It branched in different places, jumping around the runes in diagonal slants, each individual word taking the place of a rune or runes.

_"The darkness encroaches, swallowing the stars as it nears the heart, a varied assemblage of hostile forces, like tumors of a thousand cancers. Between the 13__th__ surge of blackness and the eve of the 42__nd__ millennium, a savior shall emerge from the ripples of Shadow World, and with his emergence, hope shall return to the worlds of man and push back the darkness; an antidote for the previously incurable. He will be the first of his kind, the first Confederate: Fred Jax"_

"Using a formula, we dissected the message and found infrared mapping coordinates to this planet," Tripe explained, "An astropathic disturbance reached our adepts weeks ago, tipping us off to your arrival, and we knew the prophecy had come true."

Jax was frowning. "So, let me see if I'm gettin' all this straight in my head. My name is written down in that code, sayin' that I'm a saint?"

"Wrong," Tripe said, "The Apocrypha makes no mention of your sainthood, only that you are a savior sent by the Emperor to aide the Imperium in its hour of need. Based on that information, sainthood seemed a formality; a title that the public can identify with and be motivated by."

Dimitri collapsed into a leather chair and stared at the ceiling, trying to focus on one dim can light to keep the room from spinning around him. He failed.

Secret codes written by the Emperor? Sainthood as a formality? Jax as the savior of mankind? He had always known that there was too much to the Imperium for any one man to know, but this was absolutely foundation shattering. And what was that about Jax being the first Confederate? Did that mean that there were more to come? And just what in the name of the Emperor was Shadow World?

Suddenly, Dimitri felt like vomiting.

On the other hand, Jax seemed to digest the information quite quickly. "Okie-dokie, I'm in." Dimitri watched as Jax shook hands with Inquisitor Tripe. "Any time I can help people out, I'm game to do it. And if Dimitri's told me anything about y'all's situation, it's pretty fuckin' fucked up. 'Sides, it's been too damn long since I got stuck in a good save the universe adventure. Hell, us Alpha Squadron boys were made for this kind of deal!"

"Indeed," Tripe agreed, shaking Jax's hand, "but if anyone can help us, it's you. The Emperor certainly thought so." After a moment, he looked down at Dimitri. "And you, Guardsman Vlasna? Are you with us?"

"Come on, Dimitri!" Jax said, reaching down and thumping him on the shoulder, "Let's save the galaxy!"

Considering the revelations he had just been privy to, Dimitri highly doubted that even his quick mouth would allow him to live to see the sun again if he refused. So he did the only thing he could do in the situation: he stood and shook hands with the Inquisitor.

"Good," Tripe said, "but remember: if anyone asks what we talked about in here, just tell them 'I can't say'."

Dimitri started to ask why when Jax clapped them on the back, causing both men to wince in unison. "So, let's get started!"

* * *

Thantos Hive, Defensive Ramparts

* * *

Gort snarled at the Gretchin clustered at the barricades, "Git da wall dun fasta, ya worthless gitz!"

"We'ez workin' real 'ard, Boss!" pleaded one of the dimunitive creatures. "We jus' need a little more time."

Gort shot the Gretchin in the face and pointed his Snazzgun at the rest. "Hurry up!"

The working class Orkoids hopped to it, hammering and welding pieces of sharpened steel and wood together. Gort looked back at the rest of his shooter boys where they were standing at a nearby campfire, wrestling with each other and betting on who could shove more rocks into their mouths.

"Oi! Wut ya fink yer doin'?"

"We'ez jus' waitin' round," one of them replied.

"Well quit it!" Gort shouted. "Der's work ta be dun 'fore we can git ta shootin' da humies! So git yer arses over 'ere and 'elp wit da constructin'!"

"Yes, Boss."

"And dun't slack off!" Gort said, "Dees 'ere barricades gotta be good an' strong so we can hunka down behind 'em and dish out da dakka!"

As his mob set to work constructing the defenses for the two towers, he looked back at the massive gate that the humans would have to funnel through to get into Emperor Square. The Square was central to Warboss Narkull's plan, with each mob from the different clans working to defend their own portion of the area. If everything went according to plan, Gort's boys were supposed to hold back the humans for a little bit until the rest of the warband could come in and crush the attackers. It all depended on Gort, but he rather liked it like that. After all, he was an Ork, and he was made for-

"You are not an Ork."

Gort snapped up his Snazzgun and looked around. The voice had sounded like a human female, but he didn't see one.

"You are not an Ork," it repeated.

Gort frowned. "'Course I am."

The voice returned, this time with a hollow echo to it that made it seem like it was coming from everywhere at once. "You are not an Ork. You are subject 11053. You are mine."

Gort yelped as a blinding light flashed across his vision, and suddenly he was back in the tank from his visions, floating again in the thick liquid. The details were clearer now and Gort could feel cables running into and out of his skin, punching through his flesh at points around his heart, wrists and skull. This was a clear violation of his body, but he didn't resist, too fascinated with what he saw outside the tank.

Through the glass was a room, brighter this time, and he could make out humans moving around at workspaces, all clothed in red robes. Gort drifted over to the glass and steadied himself, peering out at the world beyond. He could see other Orks like him, all clothed in blue jumpers, performing exercises and being measured.

Three humans walked up to his tank, the first a female with long brown hair, the other two so covered in machine parts that Gort couldn't tell what they were. The female pointed at him and said something to the other two.

The two machine-men reached into the liquid and grabbed Gort around the arms with claw hands, hauling him out and thunking him on a metal table. They held him there as the female disconnected the cables from his arms. When she was done she took a step back, letting another machine-man drift up to him, this one with a red-tipped needle protruding from its stumped wrist.

Gort felt a lance of searing hot pain shoot up his right arm, and as he railed against the grippers that restrained him, the woman began speaking in his ear.

"What you are now experiencing is a memory, the memory of your birth. If you are seeing this now, know that the symbol on your arm is more important than any Waaagh! banner. It makes you a friend of mankind, someone we trust. You are not an Ork. Orks are bad. You are subject 11053. You, are a humie luva."

Gort came too in a puddle of muddy water, hearing one of his boys laughing at him.

"Ey, Boss, ya jus' felled on over der! Ha!" The shooter boy seemed very amused with himself. "Dat's a good 'un, Boss!"

Gort got to his feet and looked down at his reflection in the puddle as it resolved out of the waves, revealing his face; a face that no longer had red eyes. Several things fell together in his mind and for the first definite time in his existence, Gort Malog Gragnatz da Flash Git new exactly what to do.

Slowly, he picked up his Snazzgun and turned to the shooter boy next to him.

* * *

Fifth Company's Rally Point

* * *

It was late in the day by the time the trio emerged from the Inquisitor's ship, and from Rakatev's perspective, they were each backlit by a fading golden hue by the low sun. As always, the Confederate looked to be in a good move, an ever-present bounce in his armored step. For his part, the Inquisitor looked like most of his kind: closed off and with a cold gaze drifting wherever he walked. In their own ways, neither of them gave a hint as to what they had discussed.

Dimitri, however, wore his emotions plain for all to see. The young guardsman looked depressed, even more so than usual, and he faltered on unsteady feet as he walked down the ramp.

"Throne," Rakatev breathed, "What happened in there?"

"Must have been something important," said Chernov as walked up alongside Lang, "Vlasna doesn't usually look that bad."

Rakatev eyed the plasma gunner for a second, then looked to Lang. "Vox-caster working yet?"

Lang shook his head. "Sort of."

"What do you mean, 'sort of'?" Rakatev pressed, "What kind of shite answer is that?"

"I've got the receiver working, so we can hear incoming messages, but can't reply to anything."

A shadow fell across the group, and Rakatev looked up with his good eye to see Jax standing behind him, Dimitri not far behind.

"Well, what can ya hear?" Jax asked, setting one hand on Rakatev's shoulder.

"Admittedly, not very much," Lang said, tuning the dials and listening for a response from the vox. After a moment, he pulled back and muttered, "By the Emperor."

"What is it?" asked Rakatev.

"A message from regimental HQ," the vox man breathed, "The Colonel is issuing an A-17 tomorrow morning."

It was about that time that Inquisitor Tripe walked up to the group, followed in short order by Veteran Sergeant Dirich and another Son of Marathon.

"What is an A-17?" he asked.

"Its regimental code, Lord Inquisitor," answered Rakatev, "calling for a general offensive with all companies."

"An endgame," Dimitri muttered.

Dirich made a grunt that sounded as close to an approval as the taciturn chapter drone would likely ever get. Rakatev wondered if the Astartes ate infants for a hobby.

"Corporal," said Tripe, "there is a fully functioning vox suite in my shuttle. Use it to contact this Colonel and appraise him of our current situation. Tell him we have a saint amongst us."

"On it, sir," Lang said. He abandoned his malfunctioning vox-caster and started for the ship. Before he got two steps, Rakatev grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back.

"Make sure you get Kamarov on the line, not that little Kissov gakker," the lieutenant said, "and take good notes, too. Do it quick and get back out here for a briefing."

Lang saluted and started off again, disappearing into the ship without another word.

When he was gone, Rakatev looked up at Jax. "So, you're a saint now, eh?" he asked, not caring if he was misinterpreted as blasphemous.

"Sort of," Jax replied.

"Then what do we call you?" asked one of the men of fifth company.

The men clustered around looked up at him, their eyes wide with a stare inherent to soldiers who had seen too much and were low on hope. Rakatev knew his company well, and knew just how profound an impact Jax had had on them when he and Dimitri had come stumbling out of the badlands. No matter his differences, he was one of them: an honorary guardsman. If that changed because of this saint business, then the whole unit would collapse.

"Well, I don't see any reason to stop callin' me by my name," Jax said in a low voice.

Fifth company cheered and mobbed their Confederate brother, the worries that had plagued them since he walked into the Inquisitor's ship gone.

In the confusion, Rakatev spotted Dimitri on the outskirts of the group. He pushed his way through the mob and took up a spot next to the younger man, looking out across the badlands as the planet's star sunk down toward the horizon, slowly disappearing behind the far off silhouetted spires of Utnos Hive.

"Hell of a day, huh?"

Dimitri didn't look away from the view. "Yes."

Rakatev waited a moment, hearing the shouts behind them start to form up into a chant of 'Jax! Jax! Jax!' before continuing. "I barely get a chance to talk to you one-on-one, with how you're practically attached to Jax at all hours of the day."

No response.

"Listen," Rakatev said, feeling suddenly awkward, "Dimitri, if you ever need to talk to someone, you can count on me."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Dimitri replied, "I'll keep that in mind."

Rakatev frowned. "Son, what the hell happened in there?"

At that, Dimitri looked over and the two men locked gazes.

"I can't say."

**Author's Note: There, now we're back on the updating track...I think. This chapter was written pretty fast, so you have my sincere apologies for any grammar mistakes or typos that may have slipped past my admittedly quick proof-read.  
**

** I brought in a new character in the form of Gort (I don't think typing out his entire name is necessary) who is clearly a bit odd even by Ork standards. I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with him, though I have got it down to two options. We'll know by the end of the next chapter for sure. Oh, yeah, and now Jax has been declared a saint, though it isn't entirely official yet, so I can always pull out if it gets too weird. Please tell me what you think about those developments.**

**Next chapter will firmly conclude the events of the war on Dancer VI and with it complete the first arc of this story, letting us get on with the next one. And now for a question that I need answered by all of you before we get into that next arc: what's your favorite Space Marine Chapter?**

**Thanks for reading, and see you next Saturday.  
**


	8. Chapter 8: Stories

As day turned to night on Dancer VI, fifth company dug in around Tripe's customized shuttle, constructing regulation foxholes with the rapidity and well-drilled efficiency that made them the pride of the regiment. Dirich and his battle-brothers distanced themselves from the work, clearly thinking themselves too superior for such base work, the lone exception being Dirich's second-in-command, Brother Hastrel, who dug in right alongside the guardsmen.

Teams had been sent back to the original Argnos defense trench to scavenge supplies, and returned with, amongst several cases of ammunition and heavy weapons, a very spiteful Menshaw the Ratling. By the time the sun finally sank below the horizon, fifth company had created a fortified chunk of rocky ground that would be capable of withstanding almost any direct infantry assault.

Dimitri found himself lying down atop the shuttle, using his flak jacket as a pillow as he looked up into the sky. Since the beginning of the war, Dancer's hive cities had ceased all deep-core mining activities in favor of outfitting the worker populous with weapons for the impending conflict. As such, there were no great smog clouds to clog the atmosphere, giving Dimitri a brilliant view of heavens, and for the first time in a while, he was able to let the world around him slip away and just relax for a minute.

A clang rang out in the dark and Jax was suddenly next to him, lying on his back and looking up at the stars as well. Dimitri gave him a single glance before returning to his stargazing.

"Hey," Jax whispered, "what's up?"

"Nothing."

Dimitri's eyes, as they had done every time he looked up into the night sky on his home planet of Marathon, drifted to a pinprick of light out in space. It was a single bit of red in what was otherwise a sea of black populated by glowing sparks of the most pure white.

"What's that?" Jax asked.

Dimitri followed Jax's pointing finger to find he was looking at the same anomaly. "That's the Eye of Terror."

"The place where all the bad Space Marines ran to after the Emperor killed that sonuvabitch Horus, right?"

"The very same," Dimitri agreed.

Jax let out a low whistle. "Sky sure does look different where I come from."

At that, Dimitri looked over at Jax. The Confederate was still staring up at the sky, completely care-free. At that moment, Dimitri realized that with the offensive happening in the morning, he might not be presented with another distraction-free opportunity to learn what he wanted.

"Jax, where _do _you come from?"

"You really want to know?" Jax asked.

"You have no fragging clue."

"Okay, okay," Jax said, "here we go."

And he proceeded to tell Dimitri the most incredible story the young guardsman had ever heard.

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 8: Stories_

* * *

Another Time, Another Place

* * *

Jax flicked his wrist. Stick struck ball, sending it down range and into a cluster of its kin with a resounding clatter as they broke apart. Two of the balls rolled into the far-side corner pockets.

"Son of a bitch," muttered his opponent, "did my little brother suddenly get good at pool while I was away?"

Jax grinned, chalking up his cue as he replied, "Nah, I just think ya got rusty. What's the problem, Bill, they ain't got pool in the marines?"

Bill Jax chuckled as he took a swig from his bottle of beer. "They do, but they keep you too busy with homework to play a game," he said, "You still go stripes?"

"Yup," Jax replied, sighting up on the cue ball again and giving it a good whack. It rolled across the felt and collided with the 3 ball, sending both tumbling into the middle pocket. "Shit."

"Apparently you still scratch, too," Bill said, bending down and retrieving the cue ball.

Jax took a look around Patty's. It was a small bar, having been on Antiga since the first people settled on the world years and years in the past, and in all that time it still had the same termite-ridden flooring and slow-turning, overworked ceiling fans. It was a local place that Jax and Bill had gone to their entire lives, and after a year of Bill being away in training, it was only logical for them to reunite here.

"Hey, Sadie, you get us a couple more over here?" Jax called.

Sadie, a girl bartender with less brains than her shorts were long, smiled back at Jax. She bent over to sift through the cooler and Jax let his eyes wander down her legs.

"Fred!"

Jax looked over at his brother. "What?"

"You fuck her?"

Jax smirked. "Yeah."

Bill looked back at the table and kept setting up the ball for his free shot. "No you didn't."

"Now how the hell do you-"

"I know you, Fred. We're brothers," said Bill, "Whenever you smirk like that, it's because you did the opposite of what you said you did."

Jax scoffed. "Fine, Mr. I-got-me-an-edumacation-in-the-marines, name another time where I did that."

Bill came up with an example in an instant. "Remember when I asked you if you used the back of my car to fuck Rebecca McClaine? What'd you say?"

"I said no because I didn't!"

"Fred, it took me three weeks to get the stink out!"

Jax threw his arms in the air. "How was I supposed to know she was a squir-"

"Aha!" Bill said, pointing accusingly at his brother, "I knew it! You did fuck her in my car, didn't you?"

Jax smirked. "No."

"You do know that every time you say something in this conversation, you're just continuing to prove me right, right?"

"Yes."

"Ugh," Bill groaned, palming his face, "I don't believe how fucking stupid you are."

Jax started off toward the bar to get the beers Sadie was offering, and threw back over his shoulder, "Least I didn't fuck a goat."

"I was drunk!" Bill shouted, "God damn, will you ever give that up?"

Just then, the door near them slammed open on rusted hinges, letting in a stream of blinding sunlight into the darkened cave-like bar alongside a cloud of dust. Three figures stepped inside, each a stocky-built farm boy.

Jax saw them immediately, and swore under his breath. "Shit, it's the McDougal brothers."

The biggest of the three, Harry McDougal, glanced between both Bill and Jax. "Well, well, well, looks like we just caught you at lunch, Fred. What ya doin'? Playin' some pool with yer jarhead older brother?"

"Hey, why don't you fuck off, Harry?" Jax said, pointing at Harry with one of the beer bottles he was holding.

Harry laughed. "Hear that, Spencer?"

Spencer McDougal, the tallest and smartest of the brothers, laughed along with Harry. "Yeah, little shit-shoveller thinks he can talk to us like dirt just cuz his brother's a war hero."

"Damnit, you guys, he isn't even out of training yet!" put in Sadie.

"Shut up, bitch!" Harry shouted, starting toward Bill, "I'll talk to you in a minute. First, I'm gonna take care of these two fuckers."

Jax saw Spencer coming around the table toward him, and noted that both Harry and the short, quiet one named Tobias were heading for Bill. Thinking fast, he closed in with Spencer and broke both of his beer bottles over the guy's head. Spencer rushed him and the two hit the floorboards in a flurry of punches.

Jax eventually forced his way on top and pummeled Spencer with his bare fists, breaking cartilage and cracking ribs. After a second, he stood and wiped blood from a split eyebrow, intent on helping Bill. Then he saw what his older brother was doing, and realized he didn't need it.

Bill swung his pool stick into Harry's head with a resounding crack of shattering wood, then followed it up with a palm strike to the nose that knocked him off balance. Bill pivoted on his heel and roundhouse kicked Tobias in the chest, sending him onto the pool table, before turning back to Harry and dropping him with a punch so hard it dropped him to the floor unconscious.

Tobias pulled a knife out from his jacket and jumped at Bill, inches from driving it into his spine when Bill rounded on him and caught his wrist in two hands. With a yank the joint was broken and Bill drove Tobias face-first into the pool table. He followed by reversing the knife and driving it down into his attacker's shoulder, effectively pinning Tobias to the wood of the table.

Standing back, Bill straightened his uniform jacket and looked up at Jax, a close-combat induced grin on his face that simply ran in the family.

* * *

Dancer VI

* * *

"And that's when you knew you wanted to be a marine?" Dimitri asked.

Jax nodded rapidly. "Oh hell yeah. When I saw Bill pull that off, I knew that I had to be a marine. Took the test the next day and they told me I had 'outstanding mental attributes' and 'potential'. Got shipped out for Tarsonis a week later."

"Tarsonis?"

"It was the capital. I got trained there for six months, then did another three months hazardous environment training on Korhal. I also logged somethin' like 800 hours of mem-tank trainin' in my free time."

"Throne," Dimitri breathed, "in your free time? Why didn't you take a break?"

"You kiddin' me?" Jax asked, "Time in a mem-tank is great! It's like taking a nap and wakin' up twice as badass as when you went in!"

Dimitri shook his head. "Okay, what happened then?"

"I got assigned to Alpha Squadron." Jax laughed. "Best years of my life."

* * *

Aboard the _Norad II_

* * *

"Be seated."

Jax did exactly as he was told, planting his armored ass down faster than anyone else in the room, already paying rapt attention to the man on stage in front of him.

Colonel Edmund Duke was even bigger in person, his command suit of CMC armor boosting his already impressive stature to a full 2.2 meters. Though Jax himself stood a bit taller than Duke, there was no competing with the man's presence. He absolutely radiated uncompromising authority and bull-headed aggression, the principles upon which the Confederacy was founded.

He was the perfect marine, and Jax idolized him.

Duke cleared his throat. "I wanna start this briefing out simple-like. Y'all know what they taught you in boot camp backwards and forwards. Almost all of you fought in some other squadron or colonial battalion. Y'all are top of the line marines, the best of the best.

"But boys, you ain't just marines any more. Now, you're Alpha Squadron. You're Blood Hawks," Duke thumped a gauntleted hand to his chest, "but most importantly, you're my boys now. You fight when I say, you die when I give you permission, and it'll be okay. Ask any of the old-timers round here and they'll tell you that I take care of my own.

"You're the best, sure. But me? I'm gonna make you better. Dismissed."

The marines let out a collective 'oh-rah!' and began to file out of the briefing center. Jax started to follow when Duke barked out his name, staying his feet as if he'd been grabbed.

"Colonel, sir!" Jax said, snapping to attention and giving off a crisp salute.

Duke returned the salute as he stepped down from the stage and walked up to Jax, coming so close that the smoke from his cigar was drifting into Jax's helmet.

"I read your file, son. You're the only marine in the history of this unit to be brought in straight out of boot with no prior combat experience." Duke looked right at Jax. "Why do you think that is, soldier?"

Jax truly had no idea, so he told him so.

Duke gave a thin smile at that. "Well, I do. It's because of those 800 hours you logged in the mem-tank without being resocced. That's impressive dedication, son, way beyond the limits of where most free-minders would go. I don't see that in a lot of my men, and if there's one thing more deadly than experience its commitment. I can give a soldier experience, but motivation is a bitch compared to that."

"I…think I get it, sir."

"Good. Don't forget what I said up there, either. I take care of my own. You do well in this unit, and I'll see you get more than just three hots and a cot. We'll see if we can't get you more of the three P's."

* * *

Dancer VI

* * *

"What'd he mean by the 'three P's'?" Dimitri asked.

"Promotion, pay and pussy," Jax replied instantaneously.

Dimitri didn't know whether to laugh or be ashamed at that. "Well, did you?"

"Hell yeah!" Jax roared with laughter, "I tell ya, Dimitri, you should have been there. Them first years was great. Flyin' 'round the fringe worlds, puttin' down rebellions, fightin' weird mutant thingies. I was Papa Duke's favorite, got promoted to sergeant after a year, had my own squad; hell, I even had a cabin in the officers' quarters."

"What changed?"

Jax's face darkened. "The new guy."

* * *

Forrix Base, Heyphon II, the Heyphon Insurrection

* * *

Jax checked the action on his Impaler as the dropship angled in toward Forrix base, yanking the bolt back and forth to dislodge the congealed gore that had built up during the six-hour long assault on the rebel position. It was like all the enemy knew how to do was charge them. No military knowledge at all. He hated fighting civilians.

The dropship's skids touched down on landing pad three and the ramp dropped, letting Jax and the rest of his ten man squad out onto the dust-blown tarmac. Like most planets in the Confederacy, Heyphon was a dirt-ball of a world, with frequent dust storms and hard packed earth that wasn't good for growing much besides scrub weeds. It made Jax thankful his suit was sealed against the atmosphere.

"Where to, Sarge?" asked Corporal Sanders, a resocced serial killer and Jax's second in command.

"Get the guys somethin' to eat," Jax said, already spotting Duke across the base from the landing pads, "I'll catch up."

"On it!" Sanders shouted over the howling of the dropship's engines as it took off back into the sky, another squad already on board to get dropped back into a hotspot.

As his squad moved toward the mess hall, Jax pressed on through the dust towards the Colonel, who he could now see was standing alongside another suited marine in armor that still retained its whiteness, instead of the dusted sheen that the rest of the Squadron had attained during the month-long fight on Heyphon, meaning that this marine must have been one of the new meat that just came arrived in-system with the reinforcement ship.

"Colonel!" Jax hollered as he came to a stop, snapping into a salute-less attention.

"Jax," Duke replied, nodding to Jax and letting him relax. To the new marine, Duke said, "This is Sergeant Fred Jax, the only other man besides yourself to join up with Alpha Squadron straight out of boot camp."

"Sergeant," the marine said, holding out his hand as the polarization of his visor dispersed to reveal a face framed by past-regulation brown hair, "I've heard a lot about you."

Jax shook the man's hand with barely disguised reluctance. "And you are?"

"This is our new non-com for fifth squad," Duke cut in, "Sergeant Goss."

The marine smiled and said, "Just call me Jim."

* * *

Dancer VI

* * *

Jax rolled away from Dimitri for a second to hack a globule of phlegm off the roof of the shuttle, then rolled back over. "I fuckin' hated him."

"What for?" Dimitri asked, "He seemed nice enough. He shook your hand."

"That's part of the problem."

"How?"

Jax shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know. It just is, alright?"

"Fine," Dimitri said, "I won't press it. But what happened next?"

"Well, for a year, Jim turned into Duke's favorite. He got all the hard jobs he wanted. He even got a few shiny metals," Jax sighed, "he was a real bitch. But then he changed."

"Why was that?"

Jax took a deep breath. "The Zerg showed up."

* * *

Mar Sara, Rebel Yell

* * *

A siege tank shell landed downrange, blasting a hole in the Zerg line in a spray of guts and charred carapace but doing very little to actually stall the pulsating tide of scaled alien terrors. Jax gritted his teeth and bellied up to the bunker's firing port, taking aim on the creatures outside. He squeezed the trigger and his Impaler roared, one in a hundred as the entirety of the defending marines opened up in a volley of fire.

Alpha Squadron had been in-theater for seven weeks, and in that time the aliens had launched more assaults on the perimeter of the spaceport than Jax could count.

"Holy shit, look at 'em!" shouted Sanders. "This is the most we've ever had in one go!"

Jax spotted a cluster of bat-winged alien fliers cruising in low over the enemy position and heard missile turrets outside the bunker open up in response. Rockets streaked across the sky and impacted the nimble creatures, ending their lives in outpourings of blood.

The smaller Zerg pressed in on the bunker, soaking up fire at near point-blank range. Jax dropped an empty magazine and reloaded faster than he ever had before, not even thinking about the action as his hands performed it, and kept firing. The Zerg had numbers, but Jax and his comrades were Blood Hawks; they wouldn't roll over like those colonial militiamen they'd arrested the other day.

After a full hour of fighting the constant outpouring of U-238 shells broke the back of the Zerg offensive, sending the remains scattering back into the wastelands to regroup for another attack. It was in the ear-ringing, concussion-filled aftermath that Jax realized why the attack had been so large: the forward trench had been abandoned.

Jax turned and stormed from the bunker to find the Colonel.

* * *

Dancer VI

* * *

"Did you figure out who abandoned it?"

Jax nodded. "It was Jim."

Dimitri was shocked. "Really? Why would he abandon the trench? Was he a traitor?"

"I thought so for a long time. Turns out, he went to go save his family from the Zerg, but because of that he was labeled as going AWOL and busted back down to private," Jax explained, "That's when he quit and joined up with Raynor."

"The marshal who had betrayed the Confederacy?"

"Yup."

"Why would he do that?" Dimitri couldn't for the life of him see why this Jim character would go join someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a heretic.

"I guess he saw what was comin'," Jax said. "We got hit from no where, ya know? After Mar Sara it only took a year for the Confederacy to fall, but I didn't care. I kept on fightin' on Tarsonis as security for a research bunker."

"How long were you there?"

Jax was silent for a long moment as he counted on his fingers. "Eh, a little over three years."

"In the same bunker?"

"Yup."

Dimitri shook his head. "No wonder you're so strange. So did you ever meet Jim again?"

"Yeah, when he showed up in that bunker and took what we'd been workin' on. I joined up with him and we worked freelance together for about six months."

"Then what happened?"

"Oh, that's when I died."

Silence descended over the two. Dimitri stared at Jax, who stared right back at him. Somewhere off in the distance, they could hear a wasteland cricket chirped and was subsequently swallowed by a hawk, such was the deadness of the moment.

"You…died," Dimitri reiterated it more for confirming to himself he had heard it as questioning its validity.

"Yup," Jax said, "and then I was there in Thantos, with you."

"Uh huh." Dimitri stood up, walked to the edge of the shuttle, doubled over and threw up his dinner. After he finished, his head had stopped spinning and he was able to look back at Jax. "You were reincarnated?"

Jax nodded. "Whatsa the matter with you?"

Dimitri threw up again.

**Author's Note: This chapter was primarily about exposition and getting Dimitri and Jax on the same page about the latter's origins. I tried to make it as far from boring as I could, what with the small combat sequence against the Zerg and all, but largely its just a lot of dialogue. Also, last week I said this chapter would wrap up the events on Dancer. Turns out that's next week's job, and trust me when I say it'll be violent. Orks tend to make it that way.**

**And thanks for all the feedback on your favorite Space Marine Chapters. For the next story arc, I think we'll be seeing one of them. Or two of them. Or three. Or...well, you get the idea of where this is going.  
**

**And this week's question is a little more specific to the things that have already happened in this story: What do you think of Dimitri? I know that most of you like Jax, otherwise you wouldn't have made it to this note. But how about his sidekick? And while we're at it, how about the other Imperial characters like Lieutenant Rakatev, Corporal Lang, etc.? Are these characters interesting or not?**

**As always, your thoughts are appreciated and ideas always incorporated when possible. Thanks for reading, and see you next Saturday.  
**


	9. Chapter 9: Whipping the Waaagh!

By morning, the area around fifth company had become a hub of activity as the rest of the regiment used it as a staging ground to prepare for the coming mass-invasion. Dimitri watched alongside Jax as the Leman Russ tanks of the armored company rumbled about the assembled troops. The sound of men drilling in close-knit groups drifted up to their hillside position, punctuated by a gunshot here and there where a commissar delivered justice upon a disobedient soldier.

"That's a lot of men," Jax muttered. The Confederate was standing at ease, rifle held casually at his side as he watched the proceedings below. His visor was down, so his voice came out distorted by his external speakers. "I mean, that is a _hell_ of a lot of men."

Dimitri looked up from where he sat on a boulder, surveying the area through a pair of field glasses. "I don't think we've enough Chimeras to haul them all."

"You couldn't be more right," said Rakatev as he mounted the last few feet up to their position. He reached back and hauled Lang up behind him, the vox man grunting under the strain on his remaining arm.

"Hey, Lieutenant!" Jax chirped.

Dimitri cut in. "What kind of count are we looking at, sir?"

"Last figure I heard put us at a total of seven thousand men, including the remains of the PDF and what we've conscripted from the cities," Rakatev answered. "Add in the armored company and the Astartes and I'd say that gives us a fair chance of winning this thing."

Dimitri looked back at the crowd. "I don't see the Ironclad anywhere."

"And you won't," said Rakatev. "Raiding party hit Utnos last night. Took out three Russ tanks and the Ironclad."

"Wait," Jax said, "what's the Ironclad?"

"Our Baneblade super heavy tank," Rakatev answered. "It was the backbone of our forces."

"And now it's a burning pile of scrap," Dimitri muttered. Sighing, he tossed his field glasses back to the Lieutenant, suddenly feeling as though the task ahead was impossible. "This just got a whole lot harder."

The four men quieted as they thought about facing down the Orks without a 316-ton armored behemoth backing them up. Thankfully, Jax broke the silence.

"Hey, did those weapons come in yet?"

Rakatev shook himself out of his daze. "Yeah, just arrived a minute ago in a special delivery straight from HQ."

"Well, let's go have a look-see." Jax started off down the hill, quickly followed by Rakatev.

Dimitri fell into step alongside Lang. Leaning over, he asked, "What weapons delivery?"

"Jax asked for some special heavy weapons to make up for the fact that he's running low on ammunition for his rifle," the vox-man answered. "One of the trucks that HQ sent in this morning is filled with them. Looks like Lementa pulled out all the stops once he got word of the Saint's arrival."

"Is the Colonel here?" Dimitri asked.

"Yes. Word is, he'll be leading the attack on Thantos personally," Lang gestured to the very core of the crowd, "though I doubt he'll get his way with those glory-hogging sods in-theatre."

Dimitri scoffed and cast a glance across the assembly area to where a gold-plated Thunderhawk gunship had set down alongside Tripe's shuttle. "I know what you mean."

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 9: Whipping the Waaagh!_

* * *

Dirich stood at the edge of the Thunderhawk's deployment ramp, bolter held at his side. A chapter serf moved around him with a rag, polishing his golden armor. Dirich paid the man little mind, far too absorbed in his seething anger for any external influence to trouble him.

Through the throngs of drilling soldiers, Dirich could see the Confederate making his way toward the truck that had arrived a few minutes ago, trailed by three guardsmen, one of which seemed to be his personal assistant. Dirich didn't know what disorder Tripe was afflicted with that caused him to proclaim the mercenary a saint, and he didn't care. This was clearly a mistake and Dirich would rectify it, preferably with his bolter.

"Saint," Dirich spat in the dirt. "If he's a saint, then I'm master of the chapter."

Hastrel stepped out of the Thunderhawk, a heavy bolter gripped in his hands and two regular bolters slung over his shoulders. He started off into the crowd.

Dirich grabbed him by the shoulder. "Where are you off to with such ordinance, brother?"

"Inquisitor Tripe asked that I offer some of our finer weaponry to the saint for the coming attack," Hastrel explained. Suddenly, the younger Astartes smiled. "Would you care to accompany me, brother-sergeant?"

Dirich recognized the markings on the heavy bolter's housing as the handwriting of the late Brother Malkovich, a battle-brother who had perished during the Novaguard War. Seeing this, Dirich's eyes narrowed.

"You would give such a hallowed weapon over to one who is not of our blood?" Dirich grabbed the weapon's barrel and tugged. "You dishonor Malkovich's memory with this act!"

"I do no such thing. By offering this weapon over to one so pure as Saint Jax, I am doing Malkovich the highest honor!" Hastrel grabbed the weapon with both hands and pulled it away from Dirich. "Please, we are brothers. I know your loss in the duel with the saint was stinging, but please, calm your ire!"

"You are a slave to that Ordos whoreson and no brother of mine," Dirich spat, reaching for his power sword.

The blade came out in a broad stroke, the hissing crackle of barely tamed energy splitting the air just above Hastrel's head. The younger Marine rolled to his right, the extra weight of more weapons throwing him into a clumsy tumble. Dirich moved into a kill stroke, coming down at Hastrel from above, in his bloodlust intent upon killing the misguided youngster.

Unfortunately, half a ton of Neo-steel smashed into him in a flying tackle. The power sword slipped free of his grasp and Dirich found himself face-first in the dirt, incapable of moving.

"What the hell is his problem?" Jax shouted, holding Dirich around the neck.

Dirich struggled against his grasp, superhuman strength wailing against the vice grip the Terran-made technology fixed him with. Unlike Astartes armor, which worked in a very simple way to enhance the user's strength, the CMC armor's servos were capable of working at fixed outputs, allowing for a constant application of power, something that in this case had the veteran sergeant pinned.

Hastrel pushed himself upright, gathering the weapons that spilled across the ground during his fall. "Brother-sergeant Dirich and I were sparring," he said, wiping blood from his mouth with a golden vambrace. "That is all."

Dirich stared at Hastrel, awareness dawning on him as his bloodlust cooled. Had the lad just lied to save his life?

Jax didn't release him. "You tellin' me y'all was just practicing?"

Hastrel nodded. "Indeed," he said. "Sergeant Dirich has always believed in spontaneous tests of combat prowess. It keeps his soldiers loose and prepared for anything."

"Well, okay." Jax's gauntlets clicked and with a wheeze released the built up hydraulic pressure, letting Dirich slip out of his grip. "Sorry about that, Sergeant Dirich. It just looked like-"

"No. That's quite alright," Dirich said, already regaining his regal composure. He leveled his gaze with Hastrel. "It was just a drill."

"Of course it was," put in Dimitri. "Come on, Jax. You're needed in the arming area."

"Right." Jax followed Dimitri a few feet, then turned back around. "Hey, Hastrel, come on!"

"I'll be along shortly, sir," Hastrel replied with a low bow.

"Okie-dokie. But don't be late, alright?"

When the saint and his lackey were gone, Dirich set his hand on Hastrel's shoulder. "Thank you, Brother. I knew you would come to your senses eventually."

With a sudden violence, Hastrel threw off his mentor's grasp. "Do not thank me for this. Speaking lies to an Imperial Saint is a sin that I have no intentions of repeating. It blackens me to have done so just this once."

"Then why, if your crime is so heinous, did you commit it?" Dirich asked.

Hastrel glared at him, his noble Astartes features twisted into a look of absolute hatred. Then the look was gone, replaced by something much sadder. "Because I hold hope that you will yet see the truth of the Saint. But do not mistake my words for leniency. If you put me in a position where I must make a decision between my loyalties again, I will kill you."

Before Dirich could respond, Hastrel pushed past him and after Jax, leaving the older warrior to stand and contemplate what he'd just heard.

* * *

Tripe relaxed on a plush couch, his booted feet perched atop the table before him, sipping at a glass of port. The fine liquor was expensive, probably worth enough to double this planet's measly defense force. This troubled Tripe little, as he was used to such lavish treats. Such was the allowance of an Inquisitor.

With a gesture, he rotated the hololithic image in front of him, getting a feel for the layout of Thantos hive. In a few hours the regiment would mobilize and engage the Orks there, led by their new figurehead in shining Neo-steel. Afterwards they could leave this wretched planet and set course for Terra, before getting on with the business of saving the galaxy.

Alone, Tripe smiled.

* * *

Colonel Lementa and his staff were clearly affected by Jax. Dimitri noticed it the minute he and Jax had arrived in the command Chimera by the way the Colonel's aides openly gawked at the Confederate. Jax responded as he normally did, by shaking their hands and introducing himself.

Lementa himself was a bit cagier with his reaction, his introduction more formal and his shock limited to a mere widening of the eyes.

Now they were moving, the command Chimera forming the tip of a vehicle wall that blazed across the badlands. None of the regiments Chimeras were outfitted with roofs, and as such Dimitri was able to feel the dusty wind as it whipped through the open cab. The motes of dirt stung his cheeks, the roar of the armored column was painfully loud, and the smell of oily exhaust filled his lungs, but he loved it.

"Boy howdy!" Jax whooped. He stood next to Dimitri near the front of the APC, visor up. A combo backpack attached to his back, running to the twin heavy bolters he carried, one under each arm, Jax looked like a walking tank. "Ain't nothing in the world like a good charge, eh Colonel?"

Lementa took the rough smack on his shoulder well, despite the fact that it dented one of his ornate pieces of carapace armor. "Indeed."

"Yeah, we don't use much ground transport where I come from," Jax said, starting in on a story about his home reality.

Seeing where that was going and not wanting to raise unnecessary questions, Dimitri changed the subject. "Where are the Astartes?"

"There." Lieutenant Kissov pointed to where a golden Rhino plowed across the dunes, forcibly slowing itself to keep from pulling ahead of the Chimeras.

"I thought they were committing more to the engagement," Dimitri said.

"As did we," replied Lementa's other advisor, Kamarov. "Apparently, their veteran sergeant is too good for this fight."

Dimitri looked to Lementa, expecting the Colonel to reprimand his subordinate for speaking ill of an Astartes. Instead, the old warrior kept his gaze forward, as though he hadn't heard it.

Jax, however, did weigh in. "So Hastrel's in charge over there?" he asked. "Good. That Dirich fella's an asshole."

"That's because you got into a fight with him," Dimitri pointed out.

Kamarov laughed aloud, a deep, hearty sound that easily overpowered the belching engine. "You hit the Astartes? Good for you!"

Kissov followed suit, and Dimitri found himself joining in. He looked forward and for an instant, the Colonel's face cracked into a smile.

Then something heavy and green smacked into Dimtiri's chest and drove him to the deck, quickly followed by a blanket of red that blotted out everything around him. Someone shouted Ork, quickly followed by a blast of plasma.

* * *

Five Minutes before That

* * *

Gort forced the Nob back with a kick and slammed its own battleaxe into its forehead, burying it to the hilt before letting the corpse fall to the ground. With their leader dead, the Gretchin manning the looted Basilisk artillery pieces panicked. Gort laughed, mowing them down with his snazzgun as they fled. The heavy rounds, each easily bigger than a bolter shell, blew the diminutive orkoids into little chunky bits of bloodied flesh.

When the Gretchin crews were all dead, Gort got to work on the Basilisks themselves with a sack of krak grenades. He howled with the glee that comes with wanton destruction, turning the guns to unworkable heaps of scrap.

It had gone on like this since last night, starting with Gort's own mob of shoota boyz. When they were dead, he moved on to the main camp, raiding the gun pile for grenades and ammo before setting out on a mad rampage of killing. He hadn't stopped for 19 hours, the intensity of his bloodlust and robust Ork physiology carrying him through the melee like a force of nature.

He found that he didn't have to decide what to destroy. It was instinct that had carried him to these artillery guns, an instinct that Gort understood. He was helping the humies.

Suddenly, he felt compelled to announce it to the world. "I'z Gort Malog Gragnatz da Humie Luva!" Something else in his impressionable psyche bucked and he bellowed a war cry never before issued from the throat of a greenskin.

"Fer da Emprah!"

As if in response, a horde of boyz came pouring out of the shattered cityscape around the artillery perch in a rumble of clanging blades and popping stubbers. Bullets pockmarked the cobblestone around Gort's feet. He let his snazzgun reply for him, digging a swathe through the attackers.

A grenade landed next to him. Without conscious thought, Gort grabbed it and tossed it back. The resulting detonation carved a bloody hole in the opposing Orks and threw them off long enough for Gort to get into cover behind a chunk of ferrocrete and pour more fire into them. He worked his bullets back and forth, catching most targets at head-level.

Bodies were piling up and Gort would have loved to continue the blood-letting, but his brain told him otherwise. Against his more Orky judgment, Gort pulled back to the artillery and found the weapon known as 'da boy slinga'. He grabbed a chutey off the rack and slid it on over his ammo pack.

He punched the cannon's activation rune and crawled inside the breech, tucking himself for the ex-plosive journey. A hiss drowned out the sound of fire pinging against the barrel as the weapon built up pressure. Inside the darkened barrel, Gort grinned in anticipation.

There was deafening snap of depressurizing air and Gort was gone, hurtling away from the hive city and across the open badlands. After a mile, his chutey snapped open, the cloth unfurling behind him in a spread of crimson. He looked down and spotted a phalanx of vehicles. Recognizing them for what they were, Gort angled his descent toward the lead Chimera, intent upon joining his humie allies.

* * *

Lementa's plasma blast was a little high, clipping the Ork on the shoulder and splashing Dimitri with xenos blood. The Colonel was about to fire again, but Jax beat him to it, grabbing the Ork by the straps of his parachute and slamming him into the APC's wall. The marine's heavy bolter leapt into place, the yawning maw of its barrel pressed into the alien's throat.

"'Ey, what's your problem?" the Ork barked.

"I met a lot of yer friends," Jax growled. "They all wanted to kill me. Why ain't you tryin'?"

Lementa, plasma pistol pointed at Jax's back, shouted, "Confederate, move so I can end this vermin's life!"

"Hang on a sec!" Jax replied. "Let me check this out!"

Dimitri pulled himself to his feet, wiping the blood out of his eyes. He felt around and recovered his lasgun, thanking the Emperor that it wasn't broken. "Jax," he said, "I have to agree with the Colonel. Just kill it."

The Ork didn't seem to like that. He tried to get out of Jax's grip, but the marine punched him in the face, dissuading the attempt. "Nah! Ya don't wanna shoot me, humie! I'z your friend!"

"Lies," Lementa spat, "spoken from the lips of a xenos bastard."

Jax looked back at Lementa. "Now hold on just one damn second! No one's gonna call anyone else a bastard until I'm sure of it!"

"He is an Ork, damnit!"

"And I'm a saint!" Jax roared. "If y'all think I'm so great, then why don't you listen to me once in a while? So everyone just shut the fuck up and let me talk to him! If it turns out he is a bastard, I'll blow his fuckin' head off!" No one replied. Jax looked to the Ork. "What's yer name?"

"It won't have one," Dimitri muttered. "It's a damn Ork."

"I'z Gort Malog Gragnatz da Humie Luva."

Kamarov laughed. "Well, gak me sideways. Now I have seen everything."

Dimitri stared at the alien. Human lover? Since when did Orks have sudden changes of heart and switch sides?

"Why like humans?" Jax asked.

"Beats me, humie. I'z just mindin' me business, then dere's a humie girl in me 'ead tellin' me what's what an' 'ow I need ta luv humies." The Ork shrugged. "Next fing I know, I'z shootin' up da rest of da boyz, havin' a right good and proppa fight, den I decide ta use da boy slinga and come on out ta you lot."

Jax cast a look back over his shoulder, and Dimitri feared he already knew what was coming. "We're keeping him."

* * *

A Bit Later

* * *

The Chimeras moved up through Thantos unopposed, single file despite the breadth of the tunnels. Rakatev stood in his vehicle, working a searchlight back and forth to cut through the black beyond the hull, bolt pistol in hand. Following the transports on foot were the PDF and conscripts, creeping along in the shadows.

"Quiet," Lang mused, coming to stand alongside him. "Maybe nobody's home."

Rakatev shook his head. "Impossible. The damn aliens are just bidding their time. Any contact with the Colonel?"

"Not since they split off into the eastern tunnels," Lang replied. "Scouts haven't reported any weapons fire."

Ahead, the black peeled back in a circle of light. They were reaching the upper portion of the hive, the open city-space where the upper class had lived before the invasion.

"All stop," Rakatev shouted. "All stop!"

Lang relayed the order over the vox and the convoy came to a halt. Engines were silenced and searchlights switched off. The darkness, and quiet, was absolute. Rakatev leaned forward and listened. From up ahead, he could faintly make out the sound of a mob of raised voices.

"'Ere we go! 'Ere we go! 'Ere we go!"

Lifting his field glasses, Rakatev took a closer look at the exit ahead. It was a large hole, easily large enough to fit a Titan. Scrap metal formed a rough barricade across its breadth, manned, shoulder to shoulder, by Orks.

Rakatev uttered a string of explicative words and turned to Lang. "Contact the Colonel."

"I already tried, sir."

"Well try harder!" he snapped. "If we don't get support, we can't punch through over here."

Ahead, something exploded. The Orks roared in response and the entire exit became a whirlwind of destruction.

Rakatev brought up his field goggles again in time to see Jax, Hastrel, Colonel Lementa and a Flash Git attack the Nob in charge of the barricade. The Space Marine lopped its leg off, Lementa stabbed it in the throat while Jax and the Ork put round after round in its torso and head.

Rakatev hefted his chainsword and bellowed. "All units, forward!"

The Chimeras charged, fanning out as they moved to hit the barricade in different positions. The assemblage of soldiers surged in their wake, screaming an incoherent war cry.

* * *

Jax sprayed the retreating Orks with heavy bolter fire, the rounds blasting bits from the meat of their hides and sending them toppling in forward rolls. Hastrel and Gort flanked him, the trio forming a firing line that butchered the aliens. Hastrel kept a disciplined reign of fire, while Gort tended toward a blind spray of bullets accented by a throaty roar.

Around them, Hastrel's squad and Lementa's elite shock troopers helped in consolidating their hold on the area, executing stragglers and chasing off the broken remnants.

The last fleeing Ork hit the rubble in a pool of its own exploded intestines and Jax gave the all clear.

Dimitri pulled himself out from behind a chunk of flaming wreckage, checking to make sure he wasn't dead. Throne, but that was a fierce crossfire. He had only managed one kill, but that was no surprise to him. The lasgun he carried was about as good at felling Orks as a potato thrower.

Jax stretched his armored body, groaning as several vertebrae popped within the suit. "Damn, that was good!" he said, thumping Gort on the back with one of his heavy bolters. "You're a fuckin' madman!"

Gort nodded. "Jus' doin' me job, Humie."

Dimitri still failed to grasp the logic of allying with an Ork. But aside from the obvious issue of him _being_ _a gakking xenos bastard_, there was nothing clearly wrong with Gort. He was a good fighter and had yet to try anything bad, like poison their food or eat someone's arm. Nevertheless, Dimitri would be keeping a very, very close eye on him.

Behind them, the barricade broke and Rakatev's detachment thundered onto the battlefield, a storm of treads and boots. Ramps dropped and the men of fifth company disembarked, following the orders of their sergeants to deploy in a perimeter watch.

Rakatev strode toward them, upright despite the exposed ground of the street. Lang followed him in a crouch, the vox-caster making him look like a kind of one-armed hunchback.

"Jax," Rakatev said, "what the hell is that?"

The Confederate smiled that big, convincing smile of his and gestured grandly. "This here's Gort, the friendly Ork!"

Rakatev looked to Dimitri for some sort of explanation, to which the Guardsman shrugged. "He's telling the truth. It has yet to hurt us."

"Dat's cuz I'z an Humie Luva!" Gort explained. "What's yer name, Humie?"

Rakatev bristled at being so directly addressed by a thing he had learned to hate since birth. "I am Lieutenant Irving Rakatev of the 42nd Marathon, commanding officer of fifth company!"

Gort laughed. "Dat's da fing wit you Humies. You lot's all da same size, so's it makes it 'ard ta tell who's da boss, and all ya gots ta go off of is how loud you can shout, 'Ey! You lot's gotta listen ta me cuz I'z da boss an' such!'" Gort shook his head. "Dat's a stupid way ta do fings."

Hastrel ignored them, speaking over his helmet vox. Dimitri couldn't make out the opposite end of the conversation, but he could hear the sergeant's words in the clipped, professional tones of a seasoned warrior.

"No. We've taken the southern entrance. Yes, defensive perimeter. That's unknown at this time." Hastrel shifted his weight, clearly uncomfortable. "I can't give you a sure answer on that, brother."

Jax spoke up, confirming that he was in fact eavesdropping on the vox and that it was Veteran Sergeant Dirich. "Tell you what, Dirich. You move in yer boys and we'll rendezvous at the center of this big damn city. Sound good?" Jax paused, listening. "Well, I don't know! Somewhere at the center, I guess! Does it really matter?" Another pause. "Ah, fuck your 'precise strike' bullshit."

Lementa turned from where he was ordering a Leman Russ to move out of the way of an infantry column. "You, Ork!" he shouted. "Where is Warboss Narkull?"

"Oi, he's up in da boss tower."

"And where is that?"

Gort pointed across the smaller buildings to the tallest spire in the hive. It shot up into the noon sky, chem clouds collecting around its peak high above the street they stood upon. "Dere it is."

Jax took one look at it and opened up his vox again. "Dirich, I think we just found yer LZ."

* * *

It had been two weeks. Two weeks since Dimitri's platoon had been slaughtered in Emperor Square. Two weeks since he had met Jax and escaped this wretched, xenos infested hive. Two weeks. It felt like a lifetime.

And now they returned to the Square with a full regiment, a few thousand extra troops, one Astartes squad, a good Ork and a living saint. If the greenskins pulled a victory out of this, Dimitri would accept that the Imperium was doomed.

They poured into Emperor's Square in a vehicle spear tip, headed up by the Sons of Marathon Rhino and the Leman Russ tanks, punching through the outer defenses and allowing the infantry and Chimeras to bring up the rear. Jax was out of the vehicle before it crushed the first makeshift shed, his heavy bolters chugging as they laid down fire.

The Orks rushed out to meet them, stubbers barking as they tried to soften up the humans. The Imperial phalanx held against the barrages, laying out their own firepower in disciplined overlapping fields. The snap-crack of lasgun reports filled the air. The backwash of cannon shot singed the Guardsmen, but not enough to dissuade them from firing.

Dimitri stood at the center of the phalanx, squished between Gort and Jax, facing the assaulting mob of greenskins. None of the attackers were landing their own shots, just missing over and over. Dimitri squeezed off shot after shot, concentrating on finishing off the hostiles that Jax's sweeping barrage failed to kill.

Lementa shouted. "Men of Marathon, push!"

The Guardsmen roared. Lasguns snapped and the Orks fell back into the jungle of ramshackle sheds. The Imperials moved in, flamers torching the shacks and detonating ammo stores. Jax led them, pausing to kick in doors and churn the occupants into gory paste. Gort followed, watching his back as they cleared the plaza, one hut at a time.

Orks tried to mount a defense, but they were too uncoordinated to effectively break the wall of Imperials that advanced on them. Isolated pockets of resistance were destroyed as the Emperor's warriors ground on, tanks cruising on the rough cobblestone and dropping their explosive gifts on the heads of the xenos.

Dimitri followed the momentum of the advance, sticking close to Jax, and soon found himself standing at the center of the plaza where his platoon had been slaughtered two weeks before. The realization filled him with anger and he overcharged his lasgun, sending a volley into the nearest greenskin with devastating results, spraying the alien's guts across the stone.

A Nob stood on the marble base at the center of the plaza hollering to its boyz to fight harder. Jax promptly put seven bolts in its chest, jumped up onto the pedestal and backhanded it across the face. The Nob fell to the ground and Gort fell upon him, digging into the flesh of its neck with a chopper. Jax, immediately drawing fire from the Orks nearby, planted his feet and let rip with his heavy bolters.

Orks detonated like fleshy explosives, dying by the drove. One caught a bolt in its gaping maw and its head burst.

A trukk skidded into the plaza, the aliens in its bed raking the Imperials with big stubbers. A squad of Guardsmen went down in tatters before Jax shifted his fire. The bolts caught an exposed fuel tank and the trukk's rear end exploded, flipping it forward and into a shed. The Orks in its rear that did not die in the wreck were caught by Hastrel's Space Marines that moved in to mop up.

"Dirich," Jax was shouting, "we're in position. Where the hell are ya?"

A voice rocked out across the city, carried on the wind by vox-casters mounted on poles. "Wut's dis? Humies in MAH CITY!? Wut ya fink you doin', humies? Tryin' to stop me Waaagh, eh?"

"The hell?" Jax asked, looking around for something to target.

Gort yanked his head skyward. "Dat's da Boss."

"Well, you ain't gonna stop _me_ Waaagh!" the voice continued. "I'z da hand o' Gork and Mork, and I'z neva gonna be stopped! I'z gonna kill you lot an' use ya bones ta pick me teef clean!"

Jax frowned. "He's on an intercom…" Dimitri facepalmed.

Warboss Narkull roared, the result amplified through the intercom loud enough to send Dimitri's ears ringing. Narkull plummeted from the tower above them, falling the full hundred stories to the plaza below. Jets on his exoskeleton fired to slow his descent, but he still landed with pavement cracking force.

The Warboss was covered in steel, a ramshackle, red-and-checker exoskeleton that augmented his already titanic strength. He was the height of a Russ tank and his right hand was a claw wreathed in lightning. With his left hand, Narkull leveled a double-barreled cannon and let off a blast, detonating a Chimera with the force of a tank shell.

Jax let out a whistle. "Holy fuckin' dog shit."

"Where in the Emperor's name is that damn veteran sergeant?" Rakatev muttered.

Jax shrugged. "Not sure, but this sumbitch looks big enough to squish us. We'd be better off waitin'."

Lementa didn't seem to have the patience. "You, Ork!" he bellowed, marching toward Narkull. His power saber was out, whining from the high setting he was pushing through its capacitors. Kamarov and Kissov flanked him, each man carrying their own blade and pistol combo. "You saw the death of my men here days ago, and have caused me no end of anguish! For that, I shall slay your useless xenos hide!"

Narkull roared and rushed the trio. Lementa and Kamarov threw themselves out of the way, but Kissov wasn't as lucky. With a slick tearing sound, the Warboss's claw tore through his body, slicing him to pieces before he could scream. Kamarov came up with a shotgun and put three rounds into Narkull's shoulder before he was crushed under the beast's boot, bones snapping like twigs.

The aides' deaths distracted the Ork long enough for Lementa to bury his saber in the monster's ankle. Narkull wailed in pain and spun around, leveling his cannon with the officer. The cannon belched flame and the Lord-Colonel disintegrated.

"Throne of Terra," Dimitri breathed. In less than six seconds, the regiment's entire general staff was slaughtered. Suddenly, the lasgun in his hands felt incredibly useless.

A golden Thunderhawk screamed in over the plaza, missiles streaking from its wing mounts. Narkull raised his claw and the missiles detonated against some kind of energy shield, completely ineffective.

The Astartes gunship flew past and swung around the spire for another run, its gang ramp down as it came. Like descending angels, the second squad of the Sons jumped from the bay on assault packs, riding their thrusters into the plaza. The Marines hit the ground and joined the rest of the Imperials.

Dirich favored them with a scowl. "There is an Ork amongst you."

"We know," Hastrel replied, "it is the saint's doing."

"I am not surprised," Dirich replied. "In any case, I think it's high time we ended this war."

Next to him, Jax dropped his spent heavy bolters and pulled out his Impaler. "Couldn't agree with you more, Dirich." He gestured at the target. "Here's how we'll do it. Rakatev, get the regiment into the building's around here, but keep the vehicles with us. We'll need 'em for cover."

"Understood."

Rakatev moved off with Lang, getting the regiment into gear. Dimitri watched him go, amazed at how easily he filled the empty shoes left by Lementa.

"And us?" Dirich asked. "Does your grand, saintly stratagem have any place for us lowly servants?"

"Yup," Jax replied, missing the snark in the veteran sergeant's words, "you, me, Hastrel, Gort and the rest of yer boys'll move in close and wail on this big fucker's ass."

"Rather blunt."

"Oi, sounds like a plan, Boss! Let's get sum killin!"

Dimitri raised his hand. "And me?"

"Go with the El-tee." Jax looked down at him. "And keep yer head down. This is gonna get messy."

* * *

Dirich had fought Orks before, but never one this big. Narkull was easily large enough to tip a Predator, more on par with a tyranid Carnifex than an Ork. From Dirich's perspective, the beast's armor lacked any clearly visible chinks. Killing the bastard was a daunting task, but it didn't slow his pace as he advanced, power sword in hand.

Jax marched alongside him, the inner-workings of his visor beeping beyond reasons Dirich could comprehend. Beyond the so-called saint was the Ork, Gort, wielding his snazzgun one-handed to accommodate a looted chainaxe. Hastrel walked with Dirich, bolter ready and as he saw him, the younger sergeant nodded in respect.

Narkull grinned as they approached. "Okay, we gonna do dis now, humies?" He smashed his claw to his chest, daring them to come closer. "Well, come on, den! Let's go!"

Jax made a hand gesture and a fusillade of las blasts poured from the buildings around them. Narkull cast up his energy shield, deflecting the shots.

"Hit him!" Jax bellowed, and the Space Marines opened fire.

Dirich turned to his squad, shouted "From above, brothers!" and took off on a plume of flame. He angled through the air and landed behind Narkull, his bolter roaring shaped charges into the Warboss's back. His squad landed an instant later and rushed forward, chainswords looking for a loose piece of Narkull's armor.

The Ork's power claw lashed out, slicing three of the Space Marines in half. Three Space Marines, three loyal Sons of Marathon, at least four centuries of combat experience between them.

All gone in a microsecond. The thought sent Dirich into a rage.

He rushed forward, using his jump pack for more speed, and attacked with his power sword. The blade flashed with the deftness of one who had lived his entire life in perpetual combat. Dirich let his subconscious do the work, his body dodging shots while his sword took chunks from his foe's armor.

The claw came down again and Dirich ducked, bringing his sword up to block. The blades collided; sparks showered the combatants. Dirich disengaged with a twirling parry, realizing that a moment longer would see him split down the middle, and let the last two assault marines in his squad take over.

They didn't last long, Narkull decapitating one with his cannon and slicing the other to ribbons, but their deaths bought Dirich the time he needed to leap at the Ork's head. He planted his boots on the creature's shoulders and drove his sword into its eye. Dirich put all his weight behind the thrust, grinding the blade deeper into its skull.

The Ork wailed. Dirich grinned. _That's right, bleed you xenos bastard._

Narkull reached up and grabbed him. The claw dug into Dirich's armor; the Aquilla on his chest piece shattered and his pack detonated under the pressure, killing the power to his suit's electro fibers. Dirich growled in pain as shrapnel carved into his back, but kept pressing down with his sword.

With nothing to stop him, Narkull peeled Dirich off and slammed him into the ground again and again, each impact breaking something new in the veteran sergeant's body, before tossing his broken body away like a piece of trash.

Dirich broke through a fountain and skidded to a halt, the golden ceramite of his armor torn away in places to expose the sparking underlayer of servos and fiber bundles. The stub of his power pack was in the midst of an electrical fire and his helmet was cracked down the middle, half of it already torn away.

Narkull plodded over to him faster than he thought possible and looked down at the broken Astartes. "'Ey, whatsa matter metal boy? You looks ta be beat!"

Dirich laughed. "No, xenos. You are."

* * *

In running to finish off Dirich, Warboss Narkull Megacrusha left his unshielded rear open to attack. It was one of the few tactical mistakes he had ever made, and most definitely his last.

The two remaining Leman Russ tanks got in the first shots, their main cannons lighting up the area around the Warboss. One missed, detonating scant feet from the massive alien and showing him with rock. The second, however, smacked dead center on his back, throwing him forward over the prostrate form of Dirich and through the front wall of a library.

"He's running!" Jax shouted, starting forward at a run. "Let's go get him!"

Urged on by the rebel yell of a Confederate saint, the men of the Marathon 42nd broke from cover and entered the library.

* * *

Dimitri was not the first into the building. In fact, he did not make it in at all. By the time he had pushed his way through the field of sweaty bodies up to the entry point, the front door of the building exploded as Narkull fell out and back into the street, chased by a hail of lasblasts and spikes.

One of the Warboss's legs was broken, trailing behind him leaking dark blood. Dimitri, along with the rest of the Guardsmen still outside, raised his lasgun and shot Narkull, peppering his titanic form with pinpricks of red light.

Jax emerged after him at a dead run. Narkull turned to fight him and Jax hit him like a human cannonball, breaking the Ork's nose and jaw with his shoulder before riding him into the ground. Gort ran in alongside him, pinning the cannon-equipped arm to the ground with his entire body weight.

Jax stood up on the alien's chest put the rest of his clip into the alien's brain. Despite the damage, Narkull's power claw came up to cut Jax in half. Brother Hastrel grabbed the alien's wrist and pulled the weapon back down, allowing Jax to reload and put another wave of spikes in alongside the first.

Narkull, his head now no more than a bloody pulp but somehow still alive, bucked against his attackers. Jax lost his balance and fell to the ground, his Impaler sliding aside.

"I'z Warboss Narkull!" the delirious creature roared, its voice wet with the gore clogging its throat. "I can't be beat! I'z too strong!"

Angry, Jax hauled himself up, marched around to the top of the beast's head, pulled out his flak pistol, and emptied that into the thing's brain as well, each blast spitting a fountain of blood up across his white armor.

The roaring oaths of the dying Ork were silenced. The power claw twitched and went still. For a moment, there was quiet.

Then the plaza erupted in cheers.

* * *

The Ordo Secretes pilot was good, maneuvering the unwieldy Inquisitorial shuttle in under the many arches that linked the upper spires of Thantos Hive in a remarkable display of skill. Tripe could care less. The sight displayed on the pict-relays was much more interesting.

The streets of Thantos were in ruins, but that was to be expected by anything held by the greenskins. What drew his eyes were the swathes of streets where fresh damage was evident, wrought at the hands of the Guard. It was impressive, easily outdoing what a force thrice this one's size would be capable of accomplishing. Jax's presence was clearly of great help.

Then he saw Emperor's Square. The amount of dead Orks in and around the plaza was staggering, the shuttle's cogitator struggling to tally them all. At some point, the number breached 9,000, but Tripe had long since quit looking.

The Guardsman were still killing as the ragtag remnants of the alien horde, already knee-deep in the blood of a fight to determine the next Warboss, carelessly fell on the perimeter dead zone.

"Set us down here," Tripe said. He left without waiting for a response.

* * *

Dimitri, Jax and Gort sat on Narkull's body, watching as the rest of the Guard worked on cleanup. He looked down at the lasgun in his hand, then to the titanic Warboss they sat on, struggling to wrap his mind around everything.

Jax lit a cigarette and passed it to him, somehow keeping from crushing it in his gargantuan hand. "Share a victory smoke with me?"

Numbly, Dimitri accepted the cigarette and took a draw, finding it to be the most potent cigarette he'd ever smoked. He doubled over in a coughing fit, hacking so hard he thought his lungs were in danger of coming up. When the irritation subsided, he sat back and handed the cigarette back to Jax.

The Confederate grinned and took a hit himself, breathing deeply and enjoying what had nearly killed his young friend. He offered it to Gort next, but the Ork declined.

"Nah, dun wurry 'bout me, Boss." Gort drew a cigar from his webbing comparable in size to child's arm. Lighting it with the muzzle heat of his snazzgun, the Ork grinned. "I'z got me own."

In spite of every perception shattering thing that had transpired over the past two weeks, Dimitri laughed. He hadn't done so in a very long time, and it felt great.

Jax grinned down at him. "Dimitri, you're a good guy."

Recovering from his fit of sudden humor, Dimitri grinned back. "Thanks. You too, Jax."

Rakatev walked up, followed by the ever-present Lang, and saluted. Jax and Dimitri returned the gesture. "Well, I believe Thantos once again belongs to the Imperium." He gave a weary smile. "I don't feel premature in saying that."

"Me neither!" Jax said, kicking his heel against the green hide of the monster beneath him.

Dimitri looked at Rakatev. "And who is now in command of the 42nd?"

"With Lementa, Kissov and Kamarov dead, I guess that duty falls to me. Not exactly how I figured I would get promoted, but I can't complain."

"Wut's wrong wit dat uvver humie?" Gort asked. "He do sumfing wrong?"

Rakatev shrugged. "Nope, I just never liked his methods. The human wall tactic isn't so much fun when you're on the front line. I don't think Lementa ever quite understood that."

"In that case," Jax said, getting up from his seat, "I'm gonna have to give you the rest of this victory cigarette in honor of yer new promotion." Before Rakatev could protest, the cigarette was in his hand. "To you, _Colonel_ Rakatev!"

The nearby Guardsmen applauded for their favorite CO. Gort even joined in, hooting in approval.

Rakatev smiled ever so briefly. "Thank you, but there's a lot more work to be done."

"Indeed there is," boomed Hastrel. The Son of Marathon and Inquisitor Tripe strode into the center of the group. Hastrel made the sign of the Aquilla to Jax, to which the Confederate nodded. Hastrel then directed his attention to Rakatev. "Colonel, several scattered bands of Orks are pulling back into the badlands. I suggest we divide our forces. Your regiment and auxiliaries can chase down the fleeing opposition with armor while my brothers and I finish clearing this city."

Rakatev nodded. "I concur. Lang, start forming up the regiment. Get a casualty count and figure out how many vehicles are still operational." As the vox-man moved off, Rakatev glanced at Tripe, then to Jax and Dimitri. "I take it you'll be heading out soon."

"Yeah," Jax said. "We've got some work to do."

"I understand." Rakatev shifted his footing. "Look, can you help me with something?"

Jax just nodded.

The Colonel reached into a pocket and pulled out a worn Imperial Eagle on a chain. "This was given to me by my father before he died, to deliver to the best holy place I could find and plant it there. Thing is, I've never been able to find a place holy enough for it, just bombed out chapels in embattled cities and corrupted shrines." He handed it out to Jax. "Way I figure it, an Imperial Saint is about the most holy thing I'll ever see. Can you take it?"

Jax grabbed it and locked it into a compartment on his belt. "Consider it safe."

"I appreciate that, Confederate." Rakatev held out his hand. "I suppose this is goodbye."

The two men shook, and Jax smiled. "Maybe. It's been good knowing you, El-Tee."

"I'll second that," Dimitri said, shaking as well. "Good luck, sir."

"Thanks, trooper. Live well." With one last nod, Rakatev disappeared into the assembling soldiers.

There was silence for a moment, and then Jax spoke again. "Where's Dirich?"

"In orbit." Hastrel's wide, Astartes face grinned wolfishly. "It would seem he is quite embarrassed that you were the one to slay Narkull."

Jax dismissed that with a wave. "He'll get over it."

"He'll have to," Dimitri agreed. "After all, we are leaving on your strike cruiser."

For the first time, Tripe spoke up. "No, we're not. My shuttle is equipped with warp-accessible engines. The Sons were just along as a bodyguard force."

"Warp-accessible?" Hastrel sounded dumbfounded as he pointed to the squat, black form of the craft a block away. "That shuttle?"

"Perks of administratum funding." Tripe looked to Jax and Dimitri, his cold gaze seeming to envelop both of them. "Are the two of you ready to go?"

"Yup," Jax said. "Looks like our work's done here. Oh, and we're taking Gort with us."

"WAAAGH!"

Jax nodded. "Damn straight."

"Very well. I believe the Ork will find quite a few answers where we're geading." Tripe looked specifically to Dimitri. "Are you ready, Guardsman Vlasna?"

Dimitri finally saw clearly that he was stuck with Jax no matter what, and realized that he couldn't be happier with that being his lot in life. "Yes, Lord Inquisitor. But where are we going?"

At that, Tripe's answer was simple. "Sol."

**Author's Note: And that's the end of story arc one. I hope that by now you're still interested, even though it has become blatantly obvious that when I say 'next Saturday' it's context sensitive. In this case, next Saturday meant two months later on a Friday. Sorry about that. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, as it is probably the longest of them thus far. **

**It seems strange that after so long I don't have a question for you guys, but that is the case. All I would like is your thoughts on the story, so please drop a review.**

**And one last thing: I've just started playing the board game in a serious capacity. Currently, my army isn't all that large, but it's got me thinking about something that I might post in a coming author's note. So hey, I guess I do have a question for you guys! Do you play the tabletop game and if so what faction? What edition have you been playing since? Do we have any loyal Tau brothers in the audience?**

**Until next time--which is hopefully very soon--see you.  
**


	10. Chapter 10: Shafted

Jax set his body square with Gort. "Waaagh!"

"Nah, nah, nah." Gort stepped forward and placed a hand on Jax's stomach. "Ya got's ta keep ya diafurm on da vertical so's ta git da bestest noise. Watch me." The Ork composed himself like an opera singer, coughed to clear his throat, and roared. "WAAAGH!"

The sound reverberated around the shuttle's library, shaking the bookshelves and toppling a trio of perilously balanced tomes from Dimitri's workstation. Annoyed, the Guardsman picked the books back up and continued with his studies. There were too many good things to learn from these books to get derailed by a roaring contest.

"Okay, okay," Jax was saying, "check this out." He let his visor fall into place and cranked up the volume on his external speakers. **"WAAAGH!"**

This time, the bookshelves rocked, Dimitri's ears popped, and an occulus screen shattered. The amount of books falling from the upper shelves to the ground kicked up a cloud of dust that blanketed the room and got in Dimitri's eyes.

"Damnit, Jax!" he shouted, standing up. "I'm trying to read here!" His own voice was faint, overpowered by the ringing of his ears.

**"WHAT'S THE MATTER, DIMITRI?"** More books fell before Jax realized he still had the external amps up to full and turned them down. "Um, sorry about that."

Tripe entered from the navigatorium in his great coat, his face scowling more than usual. "What in the name of the Emperor is going on in here? Did the Ork finally lose it?"

"Nah, everything's fine," Jax assured him, retracting his visor. "Gort's just teachin' me how to shout."

Gort nodded furiously. "An' ya can do it like a right an' proppa Ork, too!"

"Hey, thanks man!"

"Enough!" Tripe bellowed. "If the two of you want to shout at each other in some bizarre expression of feral joy, do it somewhere besides here!"

Gort's shoulders slumped. "Okay, I'z goin'."

As the Ork left, Jax turned to Tripe. "How far out are we?"

"An hour or so," Tripe replied. "We already have clearance to dock with an express lift that can take us right to our location."

Jax clapped his hands together. "Well, it's about time we got here. I was about sick and tired of waiting around."

Tripe nodded and left through the forward hatchway, bound for the cockpit. Once he was gone, Jax took up a seat at the table with Dimitri, the chair groaning under his weight.

Why Jax had neglected to take off his suit for the entire trip, Dimitri did not know. It seemed to him like staying in it for so long would be claustrophobic, but apparently that wasn't the case. The way he figured it, the suit was either really comfortable, or it was inescapable.

The inevitable question came. "Whatcha readin'?"

"The _Codex Astartes_," Dimitri answered, placing his bookmark and closing the tome. "It's incredible what kind of works are here in such a small library."

Jax looked at him. "You learn to read in that school before you got kicked out?"

"Yes," Dimitri replied. He didn't really like talking about his failed trip down the road to the commissariat. It wasn't that he was disappointed that he didn't become a taciturn executioner of his own forces, but others usually labeled him as a failure when they learned of it.

"You ever read this one before?" Jax thunked a finger onto the blue cover of the book, right on the golden lettering that spelled out its author: Roboute Guilliman.

Dimitri shook his head. "No. The Schola didn't have a copy of something this important. Typically only Space Marines have access to it." He looked around the room. "I'm surprised that Tripe has such an impressive selection."

"Hmm," Jax muttered, trying to look thoughtful. Unfortunately, Dimitri could see what was coming, and dreaded it. "So, about that girl…"

"Really, Jax?" said Dimitri. "Must we go over this every day?"

"Oh, come on!" Jax exclaimed. "We're friends! What else are we supposed to do besides talk about women? I'll tell you another one of mine if you want."

"Oh, yes, because I _so_ want to hear about another of your second cousins."

"She was a third cousin. Don't be a bitch, Dimitri."

The Guardsman shrugged. "I don't know why you want to hear it. It's the same story every time."

"Then tell another one!" Jax knuckle-rapped him on the shoulder, a friendly gesture that Dimitri was sure would leave a mark. "You gotta have a ton!"

"No, I don't."

At this, Jax became very serious. "You're telling me that that girl's your only one? Only one _ever_?"

"Yes."

Jax frowned. "And you're how old?"

"Know what? Fine. I'll tell you again if you'll quit making fun of me."

"Deal."

Dimitri took a breath. "So, we were on the parapet…"

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 10: Shafted  
_

* * *

Planet Marathon, Six Years Ago

* * *

Dimitri Vlasna stood on the edge of a parapet, the clean breeze of his home world tugging at the hem of his robe. He was grateful for the wind, as the garment was scratchy on his skin, the result of being produced in a sweatshop staffed by ungrateful slaves. He looked down from his perch to the ocean.

Waves lapped against the rocks upon which the Schola Progenium was built, creating great vertical sprays. As a child, Dimitri had fancied a leviathan was breaching the water every time the water tried to climb the walls, but he now knew that to be false. For a moment, he had the ludicrous thought of diving off the tower and into the tidal surf below. One foot moved over the edge, and he was well on his way.

A hand yanked him back from his suicide. "Dimitri! What the hell are you doing?"

Spinning around, Dimitri caught sight of Amaranth Vilverin, her furious blue eyes boring into him. He had known Amaranth a long time and was perfectly aware of how powerfully she could hit. His mouth, having been on the receiving end of that power more than once, started working without his control.

"Nothing." Apparently, that was the best his mouth could do without aid.

Amaranth's scowl deepened. "Do you have any idea what Scholar Martel would do to you if he found out you were sneaking up here again? You'd be kicked out!"

"He wouldn't kick me out now."

"Why not?" she asked. "He's kicked pupils out before for a lot less than sneaking up to a restricted area."

Dimitri looked at her. "Because he already kicked me out this morning."

"Funny as always." Amaranth started to drag him toward the hatch. "Now come on, let's get back inside."

Dimitri didn't budge. "I'm serious, Am. He told me this morning. I've got papers for a transfer to the 42nd Marathon Mechanized Infantry."

For a moment, Amaranth didn't believe him, until she saw his eyes. Realizing the truth, she released his collar and brought him into a hug. He hugged her back, and they stayed like that for a long moment. Her hair smelled nice.

"Dimitri," his name escaped her lips in a sigh, "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," he replied. "You didn't do anything."

At this, she got angry again. "And neither did you! Come on, we're going to march down there right now and tell Martel just what a pile of grox shit he is!"

Now it was Dimitri's turn to stop her, something he found challenging, but he finally got her pinned against the parapet wall. "No. I'm out no matter what, but if you go down there, you'll be going with me."

"Well, maybe I should!"

Dimitri shook his head. "No. I'm going to a Guard regiment. Even if you get kicked out too, you'll be sent somewhere else. Besides, you have a good future here, with the Sisters. Don't throw that away because I'm too freethinking."

Amaranth frowned, but not in anger. This was a sad expression; the look of one losing a friend. "So…this is it, then."

As much as it pained him, Dimitri replied. "Yes."

He searched for the right words to say, but none came. She was his oldest friend, maybe his only friend. What in the world could he possibly say to her before leaving? What mere words, ever, could be enough to conclude something that important?

As was normal, Amaranth figured it out faster and landed a crushing kiss on him.

* * *

Mars Orbit, Present Day

* * *

"And then what?"

Dimitri had looked up at Jax and scowled. "You know then what."

"Oh, come on!" Jax had said. "Don't stop there! You're quitting before the best part of the whole story! Fuck!"

"Exactly," Dimitri had replied. "We did fu—"

Suddenly, the entire shuttle bucked and stopped all conversation. Tripe entered calmly from the cockpit and glanced at them as he moved aft. "We're docking with Mars orbit to ground. Get ready for disembarkation."

Presently, Dimitri threw on his armor, snapping buckles and cinching straps in a routine he'd learned after half a decade of fighting in the Emperor's armies. He slapped his helmet on, slung his lasgun, and ran through the shuttle. He bounded into the airlock alongside Jax, Gort and Tripe. When he arrived, the Inquisitor and Confederate were in the middle of a conversation.

"So they're gonna lower us all the way down into the ground?" Jax asked.

"Yes," Tripe said, busying himself with buckling the front of his great coat. "Mars's atmosphere is much too polluted to disembark upon. One of the filtered labyrinths is preferable."

"Mus' be a big lift, den," Gort put in. The Ork held his Snazzgun at his side, fresh runnels of paint dripping from its barrel to splat on the airlock floor. "So when we gittin' dere?"

The ship shuddered around them as they came to an abrupt stop. Tripe looked over his shoulder and grinned. "Now."

The airlock door opened and Dimitri was hit by the smell of oil. Outside, a steel cavern that stretched off into the darkness, lit only by industrial sized lumen globes set into the arched ceiling. Ribbed platforms jutted out of the walls and ceiling at random intervals, each the size of a hive spire and covered by thousands of bright squares.

Tripe spread his arms wide. "This is the Factorium Gigantis Prime. It is a seventy mile long cylinder, stretching from the planet's stratosphere to deep beneath the crust, rotating to simulate gravity around the outer edge."

Jax looked over at the man. "Why the fake gravity? Why not just build the factories regular-like?"

"It's a space issue," Tripe explained. "Mars puts out seventeen times the gross annual product of a standard forge world. The way that's accomplished is through extra production room, meaning that there are six hundred factoriums like this all across the planet's surface."

Dimitri stepped out of the airlock and looked up, seeing the opposite side of the factorium obscured by a cloud of pollution that wafted up the center towards titanic vents at the top. The sight of conflicting gravities made his head spin, and he grabbed a railing to steady himself.

Jax walked beside him and let out a whistle. "That's pretty fucking nuts."

Gort wasn't amused. "Eh, wha'eva. When we meetin' da rest uv da humies?"

"Yeah, shouldn't there be a welcoming committee?" Jax asked.

Dimitri looked across the lift area to where a door slid open. A figure entered, his frame massive and clothed in the Aquilla armor of the Adeptus Astartes. The Space Marine marched toward them, raising a hand in greeting. "Lord Inquisitor, it is a pleasure to have you on Mars again."

Tripe smiled and greeted the Marine with a warrior handshake, each man's hand clasping the other around the forearm. "It is good to see you, Brother Castarius."

Dimitri noted the cogskull symbol on Castarius's pauldron and the mechanical claw that protruded from his back. "A Techmarine," he muttered.

As Tripe and Castarius continued talking, Jax leaned over and whispered. "What's that?"

"Astartes chapters often send their battle-brothers off to Mars to be educated by the Mechanicus on the ways of the machine, making them into Techmarines," Dimitri explained. "Castarius here must be one of them."

"Then what the hell's he doing meeting us?" Jax asked. "Shouldn't he be off repairing tanks and shit?"

Dimitri shrugged. Though crudely delivered, Jax had a point. Techmarines were trained and then returned to their chapter; the _Codex_ was very clear on that. Why one would be working as the greeter here made no sense.

Presently, Castarius was looking at Gort. "Is this the one you spoke of?"

"Yes," Tripe said. "It seems as though he has some questions needing answers."

"Yeah! What's da deal wit me brain bein' all weird and fings!?"

Castarius ignored him and turned back to Tripe. "The decision on how to handle him is still very much in debate, so until then, we cannot give him any answers. I'll have to ask that you retain him for now."

Gort didn't like that. "Retain? I'll show ya retainin', Beaky!" The snazzgun boomed, an inaccurate burst that sliced past Castarius and careened off a support strut in a series of whining ricochets.

Jax, moving faster than Dimitri thought possible in his armor, lashed out and knocked the Snazzgun from Gort's grasp. In one fluid motion, he stepped up to the Ork and caught him in a headlock.

Gort struggled. "Lemme go! He's tryin' ta keep me down!"

Jax punched him six or seven times in the head, breaking off one of the alien's teeth and cracking his jaw.

"Fine," Gort muttered, "I'z stayin' on da ship."

Jax shook his head. "Not good enough. Tell Brother Castarius yer sorry for trying to blow his head off."

Gort twisted in Jax's grip and scowled up at him. "Wha?"

"Tell. Him. Yer. Sorry."

Defeated, Gort looked back to Castarius. "I'z sorry fer tryin' ta blow yer 'ead off wit me flash, Beaky."

Castarius, looking more confused than Gort, tried to come up with a response. "Uh, apology accepted, Ork."

Jax released Gort and let him head back into the shuttle, pausing to pick up his snazzgun and check it for damage. The airlock closed behind him and Castarius looked at Jax.

"You're the saint," he said.

Jax shrugged. "So they tell me."

"You subdued that Ork quite quickly." Castarius stepped closer to Jax, his mechanical claw twitching as it responded to the idle thoughts of its owner. "I've seen brothers laid low by Nobs his size. How'd you manage it?"

"I forced more output into the arm servos," Jax explained. "After Dancer, I came up with a custom output fer dealing with 'em."

Castarius circled the Confederate, looking him over with clinical thoroughness. "What do you mean?"

Jax looked sideways at him. "What? Oh, more on the output?" He slid his visor down and used his external speakers as he called the specs up on his HUD. "I keep the leg functions runnin' pretty hot. Orks don't use their legs much in a fight. They're more into just hittin' hard, so bein' better in the legs is easy enough. Then I keep my arm pressure pretty high, too, so my hits can do somethin'. Makes me slower up there, but my legs make it."

At that, Castarius looked up at his face. "Variable fixed outputs?"

"Yup."

"How much force?"

"From feather to dump truck," Jax answered. Dimitri hoped those weren't actual settings, though he had a sneaking suspicion that was the case. "Against Orks, I use sedan."

"Incredible. We always knew the suits were advanced but this is just..."

Dimitri leaned in. "Uh, suits? As in, more than one?"

Castarius looked at him with a withering gaze, assessing everything about him in a single glance. "Inquisitor, is this Guardsman…" He let the implication hang.

"Yes," Tripe replied, "he is in. We can show him as well."

Castarius gestured to a waiting maglev car. "In that case, follow me."

* * *

The Eastern Fringe

* * *

Shas'o Shaserra stood in a field of flowing reedgrass, looking into the distance at a low steppe range and picking out the features of the land with unparalleled clarity. Details: the incoming storm front, pollen drifting in the breeze, the shudder of a savannah bush signifying the passage of a to'lara rat. Such was her perception of the world, the gift of her people's genes.

No human could ever match that and their dullness of sense made them ignorant of the truth of life. They were opposed to the betterment of one's self through the understanding of the universe around them, and thus they were failures. They did not progress, and no matter their position, no human could ever truly understand the Greater Good.

Except one.

He was here now, standing a respectful distance from her amid the grass. Like Shaserra, he was dressed for combat, his tanned armor immaculately clean and pulse rifle slung. His helmet was in the crux of one arm, through her peripheral vision Shaserra watched him take in the sights, his intense blue eyes flicking back and forth across the arid land.

For a moment so brief she thought it hadn't happened, he glanced at her, eyes scanning her in a clinical fashion so that his calculating mind could discern her intentions. She knew he would; he was very good at figuring things out. His senses weren't just uncommon for a gue'vesa, but unheard of.

And that's why they were here, in the middle of a savannah on T'au: one last test before she told him.

"Why are we here?" she asked, not looking at him.

He replied in the tongue of her people, and even though it was not his native language, he spoke it powerfully and with twice the grace of a third generation gue'vesa. "We are here because you want to know how close I really am."

She hadn't expected that. "Close to what?"

His eyes flicked to her again, this time for a fraction longer than before. "How close I am to the Greater Good, and how distant I am from human. You realize that I am good at what I do, but that progressing further along my path is not a matter of skill. It is a matter of dedication."

Good, good. Just a bit further…

"And that," he said, "is why we are here. T'au is the birthplace of your race and the world that fostered the Greater Good. To truly appreciate the philosophy, I should be moved to stand here and observe its qualities, its landscape of arid savannah, the cloudless blue sky and the endless sea of reedgrass."

Shaserra turned to him. "And are you?"

"No," he stated.

Trying not to grin, she asked, "Why?"

Now, their eyes locked. "Because this is your home, not mine. I feel wonder for this world's inherent beauty, but will never achieve nostalgia for it, nor a sense of fury when it is threatened. I fight for what I believe to be right, a philosophy shared by the Greater Good. I would no more fight for T'au than you would for my home."

Face impassive, he turned back to the view. "If what I have said has had an effect on your decision, I apologize for letting you down. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be returning to my team."

As he started to turn, Shaserra smiled. "That is the right answer."

He stopped and looked back at her. "Come again, Shas'o?"

"I agree with your ideals. They are in league with my own, and the tenants of the Greater Good are satisfied." She reached out and set a hand on the symbol of the T'au emblazoned on his breastplate. "As of now, you are no longer a Shas'El. Your name is changed, your responsibilities broader, and my expectations of you greater. You are now Shas'o Gue'vesa K'han."

K'han touched her in kind and inclined his head. "I thank you, Shas'o Shaserra. What would you have me do?"

"Your orders are with your cadre," she replied.

Though his face was alien, the look of surprise was still evident. "My what?"

"Your cadre," she repeated. Reaching into a compartment on her armor, she produced a tab with all the information on his unit's strength, transport, axillaries and personnel profiles. "Did you think I would give you the position of my third primary sub-commander for this expansion and _not_ give you soldiers?"

With only a moment's hesitation, K'han grabbed the tab and headed out toward his waiting Piranha . Shas'erra watched him go, finally knowing the pride of completing a mentorship. As his skimmer moved away into the distance, she raised one fusion blaster and discharged a blast: a one-gun salute for the Fire Caste's first human commander.

* * *

Segmentum Solar, Sol System, Subterranean Mars

* * *

The maglev screeched to a halt and Dimitri followed Jax and Castarius off with the eagerness of a rodent fleeing a canine. Tripe was the last person out, seeming quite bored. Dimitri envied him.

The ride had been perilous at best, with several near-collisions with other cars so close that they shared track at points. Castarius had assured them that the entire system was carefully monitored by cogitators to keep the cars from colliding, but Dimitri doubted the thinking machines took into account safety on some of the maneuvers.

"Come," Castarius stated.

As the Techmarine and Inquisitor headed off down a poorly lit hallway, Dimitri leaned over to Jax. "Pleasant, isn't he?"

"Well, he's an Assturd," Jax said. "In my experience, ain't a kindly sort to 'em."

They walked for a while with only the sound of boots on stone and the whirring of servos in Jax's suit. Castarius was silent, the electro fibers in his armor originating from a totally different technological perspective, one that prided user efficiency over raw power.

As he watched the two men move, Dimitri realized just how equal Jax was with the Astartes, how his armor, via technology, put him on par with the super humans. There were areas where one stood above the other, but they were quite equal, just achieved differently. In fact, Dimitri reasoned that in a fight, the two would complement each other.

Is that what they were venturing down here to meet: a team of Astartes to attach to the saint's growing retinue, or something more vicious? Perhaps some terrible secret had spilled over from shadow world and had to be stopped.

Castarius stopped at a door and thumbed it open. Lumen globes burst to life along the new chamber, illuminating a truth that was, as it turned out, much less cliché and a lot more confusing.

Twin rows of armor ran down the sides of the hall, light reflecting from their burnished steel coatings. None had been painted and each was locked into its own booth, ready lights blinking in sync. Servitors moved from booth to booth, buffing the armored plates and checking power cables in a routine that looked to have been going on for centuries.

"CMC armor," Jax muttered. He walked into the room and crouched by the nearest suit. As he checked the power linkup, he addressed Castarius. "How the hell do you have all these?"

The Techmarine stepped forward. "The Mechanicus has collected these over the millennia, working in conjunction with the Ordo Secretes to pinpoint the location of each suit. All three hundred units have been brought back here and maintained by the Keeper of the Armor."

"And that Keeper is?" Dimitri asked.

"Me," Castarius replied. "I am the seventeenth Keeper. Those that came before me were techpriests, but I have tried to keep up their quality of work."

Jax pushed back the visor of the suit he was fiddling with and shone his shoulder lamp inside. "Looks to me like ya done real good. I seen Dominion units that ain't kept their gear this clean."

Castarius looked a bit shocked at that. Dimitri guessed he didn't get many compliments. "I've tried my best to understand these suits, but it has proven difficult. In all the time they've been here, not one of these models has ever been activated."

Jax reached inside the helmet, flicked a switch, and thumped the inert suit on the side with a balled fist. With a shudder and a roar, the armor powered up, the reactor hump ejecting twin plumes of flame from its exhaust. The whole thing rocked in its cradle, beeping off a diagnostic checklist.

Castarius's jaw dropped. "How…?"

"These models are newer than what I got, but CMC ain't changed starters on their suits since the 210s," Jax replied, checking the linked power supply cables. "Ya don't start 'em up every now and then, they get a little rusty." He punched one hand into the other to emphasize his point. "Gotta hit 'em."

Looking suddenly weary, Castarius leaned against a nearby booth. "All this time and all we had to do was hit them. Throne of Earth…"

Tripe clapped his hands together. "Well, this is good news. Jax, do you think you could activate the rest of these suits?"

"Yup."

"Good." Tripe looked back at Castarius. "Is the ship ready?"

"Wait," Dimitri interrupted, "what ship?"

Tripe nodded to Castarius, who stood up and walked over to the both of them. "The one that will carry the three of you to Terra," he said, striding past and into the hall. "It is being prepared as we speak. Please, follow."

Dimitri's mouth dried up and he sputtered as he spoke. "Terra? As in Holy Terra?"

"Hell yeah!" Jax smacked Dimitri on the back, jarring his bones. "Come on! Let's go take a look at Earth!"

Tripe grinned. "Come now, Guardsman Vlasna, you can't expect to meet with the High Lords on Mars, can you?"

Jax frowned. "The who?"

Dimitri didn't answer him. He was too busy passing out.

**Author's Note: First off, I apologize to anyone who didn't like the little Tau portion. I realize that they aren't a very popular race and that no one wants to read about them, so let me assure you that that particular character won't show up again for a long while. Okay? Crisis averted? Cool, let's move on.**

**Thanks for reading this (slightly smallish) chapter. We're into story arc two, which seemingly entails a lot of CMC armor. More on that in the next couple of chapters. **

**I hope you liked the fact that this chapter actually came out in accordance with my update plan. I certainly do. It's one less thing off my writing plate.**

**Anyway, tell me what you thought. Next one will be up soon.  
**


	11. Chapter 11: High and Mighty

"Now, why the hell are we going to Earth?"

Dimitri looked at Jax, consequently having to blink away the multitude of overlays his visor created at such an action. Encased in a brand new suit of CMC armor, he found that just moving without over exaggeration was taking up too much of his time to actually answer the Confederate's question.

They were in the passenger compartment of an in-system transport ship, bidding time as the transport made the journey from Mars to Terra. Well, Jax was taking a break with a can of Guard-issue protein rations; Dimitri was busy figuring out the complex workings of shadow world engineering, a task that was giving him no small amount of trouble.

In fact, that brought something else to mind.

"Inquisitor," Dimitri said, "why am I in this suit?"

Tripe looked up from the folding table he was working at. "For presentation. The High Lords won't fund our endeavor if all they have to go off of is one working model."

Dimitri's visor decided that was a good time to show him a full scan of his own vitals, cluttering his view with pulsing graphs and x-rays. "Endeavor?" he asked, blinking the stats away. Throne, that was annoying.

"Yes. The overall idea is to create a strike force out of those suits," Tripe explained. "With Jax in charge, of course."

Jax finished off the last of his food, crushed the can and tossed it across the compartment. "Then what do we need permission for? Let's go get some guys, load 'em up, and whoop ass!"

Tripe nodded. "I would love to do just that, but unfortunately, it isn't that simple."

"It never is," Dimitri sighed. He reached up and behind his back for the grip of his Impaler, but missed and ended up turning around. "At what point were you planning on telling us about this plan? Just now?"

"Yes," said Tripe. "Until an hour ago, we didn't even know if those suits could be activated or not. Telling you about it before then would have…complicated things."

Dimitri felt like shouting at the Inquisitor, but between Tripe's own sturdy reasoning and Dimitri's worse-than-bad suit skills, he decided to let it slide. "But if Jax is a saint, then why do they even need to observe him? Shouldn't they just give us permission automatically?"

"Yeah!" Jax said. "What the hell's with that, man?"

Tripe shrugged. "While a majority of the Imperium will believe an Inquisitor's word as truth, some higher officials will be less trusting, and those are the officials this unit would have to deal with. To get the necessary autonomy, Jax has to be an officially sanctioned saint. Hence, we're meeting with the High Lords."

"Wait just one damn minute." Jax stood up from his crate, brow furrowed in thought. "If my name's written down in y'all's secret book-thing by the Emperor, then why don't they just give me the saint license now?"

"If the past has shown us anything, Jax, it is that the intentions of the Emperor and the intentions of the High Lords of Terra are rarely the same."

Dimitri guessed that his mind should have blown by that realization, but in light of the current state of his life, it didn't seem that big a deal. Besides, the damn suit was messing with him again. "Jax, what's a gyro-synchronous modulation servo?"

"Oh, that's what keeps you standing. What's it saying about it?"

"That it's out of calibration."

"Gotcha," Jax said. "Yer good. Just don't—"

Dimitri shifted his weight to get at the rifle better, felt his right leg's joints whirr out of synch, and collapsed to the floor with a resounding thud.

"—lean back. Ouch."

With extra care not to pulverize his own face, Dimitri pushed the visor up. "This is going to go well."

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 11: High and Mighty_

* * *

Lar'shi'vre Class Cruiser _The T'au'va United_

* * *

K'han flexed his fingers and watched as their counterparts on his XV8 battlesuit arm mimicked the motion. Content, he pulled his hand out of the stirrup and nodded to his personal tech drone. "It feels right. Reattach it, please."

"Right away, Shas'o K'han," the drone's AI replied.

As the machine hovered away, arm clamped to its underside, K'han took a breath. Shas'o. The prefix was odd, clinging awkwardly to his name like a growth, constantly reminding him of his newfound responsibilities.

He looked across the assembly area, where the members of his hunter cadre were making themselves at home in this new ship. Many of the teams on the roster he knew from his tours with Shaserra, including both Fire Warrior teams. There were two Crisis suit pilots in the cadre, one named La'non, the other Feg'at. Both warriors had been in his Crisis team under Shaserra, and following his promotion, they were now his bodyguards.

Strangely, the cadre members whom K'han was least familiar with were the gue'vesa teams. There were fifteen teams, collectively numbering one hundred and eighty men, each one blooded in the many wars of the third sphere expansion. It made sense that they were assigned here. He was human, they were human. Like for like.

But as he watched them now, K'han could read their unease at this new posting. They were rough, that was for sure; scratched armor paint, ragged coats, beat up weapons. They looked at him in sideways glances, clearly despising his presence. K'han met their eyes with a glare that sent them back to their business.

"They don't like you," La'non said, walking up behind him.

K'han folded his arms and leaned against a crate. "I noticed."

La'non chuckled. "You know, friend, they have a name for you already. _K'ha'ni'T'au_, they say."

"Walks Like Tau," he repeated in Imperial. "I'm glad they noticed."

"I do not think they mean it in a respectful manner, K'han."

"No, I suspect they don't." K'han looked back at his friend. "Where's Feg'at?"

La'non inclined his head back at the door to the mech chamber. "Calibrating the stabilizers in his suit. They're still malfunctioning after that round he took on Tu'mire. Did you need him for something?"

"Yes. We need to go over this next mission. Once we've got the finer points down, we'll brief the rest of the cadre." K'han started off toward the main access corridor. "It's about time we get this cadre working like it should."

* * *

Segmentum Solar, Terra

* * *

There was a hiss, a pop, and a whoosh as the airlock pressure equalized with the atmosphere beyond. The door opened and air rushed into the chamber, bringing with it the scent of humanity's birthplace. Feeling the warmth on his face, Dimitri closed his eyes and drew a deep breath.

He immediately regretted it.

His lungs filled with what felt like coppery smog fart, tinged by smell of steel burning as if in the aftermath of an acid rainstorm. The warmth on his face quickly became too warm, his skin itching under its touch. Sound assaulted him; a cacophony of various roars blended together, like his head had been dunked into a trash grinder.

Dimitri opened his eyes and looked upon Holy Terra. An expanse of steel spires stretched out before him in every direction, growing in and out of each other like thorn vines in a thicket. The tops of most buildings belched brackish streams of pollution into a sky backlit by the light of Sol, turning the sky ruddy brown in a perpetual evening. To Dimitri, the sight made him think of the dusk of civilization.

Jax, as always, summed it up better. "It's a fucking trash heap!"

"Yes," Dimitri said, hating that he agreed, "It is."

Tripe bristled at the words, but otherwise did not acknowledge them. "Come," he said. "We have a shuttle waiting to take us to the Imperial Palace."

"Yeah, always did want an aerial tour of a junkyard." Jax spat on the landing pad decking. "Never seen scrap before."

"Your sarcasm isn't appreciated," Tripe snapped.

Dimitri was about to interject when his suit beeped at him. Wondering what was wrong, he flipped the visor down to find an alert informing him that the atmosphere levels were hazardous to his health. Finding himself in agreement with the armor's assessment, Dimitri sealed his helmet and fumbled to get the filtration scrubbers running.

As a golden shuttle set down before them, Dimitri took another look across the world he'd dreamt about since he was a child. "You know, this is pretty disappointing."

"Life's a bitch," Jax said. The Confederate looked into the distance with Dimitri. "But hey, they did have to clean up after a war. That takes time, especially if it's a big one. When was that Heresy? Hundred years ago?"

Dimitri shook his head. "Try ten thousand."

"Ten thousand!" Jax exclaimed. He turned to Tripe. "Why the fuck ain't this place cleaned up? Y'all got people livin' in a bunch of shit!"

The Inquisitor turned from the shuttle. "Jax, this is our home world you're insulting!"

"Mine too, ya sumbitch!" Jax shouted back. "Different dimension, same damn species! I always liked Earth, but look what ya did to it!" He stabbed a finger out at the mountain range of cess-hives. "Whole damn planet looks like an infected ball sack!"

Tripe sputtered for a moment, trying to come up with a valid response. When that failed, he got simple. "You look like an infected ball sack!"

"Bullshit! I got cream for that!"

That shut the Inquisitor up. Dimitri didn't blame him. He didn't think he would have had a response for it.

After a moment, Tripe collected himself and regained his steely composure. "We need to move. The High Lords do not like to be kept waiting."

Jax followed Tripe into the shuttle. "Come on, Dimitri!"

Spacing his steps with care, Dimitri navigated his way into the shuttle. The armor was still a little uncomfortable, but he was determined to master it. He would not look like a fool in front of the most powerful politicians in the galaxy.

He feared that was Jax's job.

* * *

Inquisitorial Shuttle, Mars

* * *

Gort had found the techpriests to be very helpful. He couldn't leave the shuttle on orders from the boss, but after two hours and some clever switch mashing, he managed to get the small ship's vox equipment on his side. Once he'd found the right frequency, he'd started making demands. Within an hour the humans had delivered him a jumble of parts and red paint.

Lots of red paint.

Now, using a shiny tube, some springy bits, a shock block and some Orky ingenuity, he had fashioned a secondary weapon function for his snazzgun. It shot lighting. He had the charred bulkhead and ashen remains of a bookshelf to prove it. Maybe working in the library had been a bad idea. Dimitri sure would be mad about the books, but it was totally worth it.

The gun shot lightning!

After a while, the techpriests called him back on the radio and said that he had a visitor coming up to talk to him. Gort told them okay and put three more coats of red on his snazzgun, as well as another on the spiky bits on his shoulder pad. After all, he had to look real flash for the company.

There was a knock at the airlock and Gort mashed the open stud. The door peeled back to reveal the human woman from Gort's head picts. She looked just like he remembered her, including the black coat.

"Hello, 11053."

"'Ey," Gort said, holding up the snazzgun and grinning. "Me flash shoots lightnin'."

"I'm sure it does, 11053." The woman looked past him and into the shuttle. "Is that a library?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Dat's da book place, but I'z been doin' ma work in dere too."

She walked past him, and he didn't stop her. Instead, he followed, watching her take a seat at one of the lounging couches. "Can you grab the glass and bottle out of that cabinet?" she asked.

"Sure," Gort replied. He sat his gun down and got the items from a wall locker, careful not to break them.

She took them off his hands and he sat down next to her, the action gaining him a strange look. Was she mad about something?

"You weren't supposed to come back," she said, popping the bottle's cork and dumping most of its contents into the glass. She then sipped on it, watching him over the rim of the glass. "Why did you?"

"Dun know why, Boss. Jus' did. Seemed like da fing ta do."

"You became a flash git. Why is that?"

"Started like a slugga boy, den 'cided I like 'splosions an' dakka more. Choppin's easy. Dis 'ere's 'ard. Gotta be cleva ta git good at bein' shooty."

"Are you good?"

Gort laughed. "I'z more shooty den a Grayskin, and dey'z known fer shootin'."

"Good to know. 11053?"

"Huh?"

"Now that you've seen me and talked to me, do you know where you came from?"

"Yeah. I know. Ya made me in da tubes, den put me in wit da rest o' da boyz. When da Waaagh! I'z in got big as it need to, I'z supposed ta turn on 'em an' kill 'em all. I'z made ta die fightin' 'em. I'z an Humie Luva."

"Very good, 11053." Finishing off the last of the glass, she stood up and headed toward the airlock. "Stay with your new friends. You are doing well."

"'Ey, you mean I dun good even not dyin' an' fings?"

She stopped and looked back at him. "Yes. It was unexpected of you to live, but I don't expect any of the others to do the same. An isolated incident like this is beneficial."

"Oh," Gort said, "good."

He turned back to his gun, continuing to tinker with it. He was contemplating applying another coat or part when she spoke up again.

"11053, why don't you want to know my name?"

Gort knew that answer. "'Cuz I know who ya are. Dunt need a name. 'Sides, you ain't asked me fer mah name."

She smiled, showing a mouthful of perfectly white teeth. "No, I suppose you didn't. Good luck, 11053." And with that, she left.

Gort stared at the empty doorway for a total of six seconds before going back to work.

* * *

Outer Imperial Palace, Terra

* * *

Jax snored too loudly, waking himself up. He shifted in his seat and looked out the window next to him, down at the world the shuttle was skimming over. He blinked to clear the blinding glow that doused his vision, then said, "Well, that's better."

Dimitri was inclined to agree, and would have done so verbally if he hadn't been speechless for the past half hour. If the rest of the planet had been the opposite of his dreams, then the Imperial Palace seemed made to appease them.

Ever since the shuttle had breached the perimeter, the smog had cleared thanks to a vast array of golden atmospheric processors that ringed the entire subcontinent. Gold was a common theme here, with the entire palace made up of gleaming pyramidal structures that lazily rose up and down the landscape, each one as big as a hive city.

Far, far below, streets of holy brickwork pulsed with throngs of adepts: the blood in the beating heart of the Administratum. This was the core of the Imperium, the seat of power. Even from this high up, Dimitri fancied he could feel the energy of the history that had unfolded here.

He spotted weapon emplacements on every structure and concentric buffer wall, the collected firepower of them all capable of blowing a battlefleet out of orbit. The defenses were perfect, and as Dimitri's eyes darted back and forth between them, he couldn't figure an easy attack path.

He kicked himself when he remembered that Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists, had designed the layout. Then that, too, amazed him: he was examining the defenses of a primarch. For a moment, the joy in his heart was so great he figured he would never get over it.

A shadow fell across the shuttle and Dimitri moved up to the cockpit to see what it was. When he did, he realized there was a lot more joy to be had, and possibly a heart attack to go with it.

Ahead of them, so tall that its magnificence towered above even their great height, was the Eternity Gate. Beyond lay the Inner Palace, a peak of gold eight times the size of anything around it.

Dimitri steadied himself against a pilot's headrest to keep from passing out. His suit let him know he needed to breathe, so he tore the helmet off. It was getting in the way of the view.

Jax and Tripe entered the cockpit alongside him and looked up.

"Yup, that's a hell of a lot better."

Tripe's cold face grinned. "Now, I welcome you to Terra."

Dimitri made a choking mouse noise in reply. Considering the fact that his proximity to the Holy God-Emperor of Mankind was now measured in scant miles, Dimitri was proud to have said even that much.

"Setting down at the Senate building in ten minutes," reported one of the pilots.

"Gotcha," Jax replied. "Okay, let's go chat with some old farts."

That was rather blasphemous, but at this point, Dimitri was too happy to care.

* * *

A Little Later

* * *

They were shown to the council quickly, shuffled along by a mob of robed adepts that seemed oddly preoccupied, as if escorting an Inquisitor and two heavily armored men wasn't anything spectacular. They were pushed past a battalion of well-dressed and well-armed honor guard soldiers without as much as a word of protest. Apparently, someone had pulled strings to get them in post haste.

Dimitri was aware of just how spectacular the architecture around them was, but didn't have time to admire it as he was concentrated on not tripping in the armor. They reached the senate chamber through an arched doorway, entering onto a low floor. The High Lords were arranged above them, each with his own balcony suite. Dimitri looked at them and his suit magnified the view, revealing the massive retinues that hovered around the lords.

A rune labeled 'comm. link' popped into existence in his visor and Dimitri heard Jax's voice. "Which one in each balcony's the High Lord?"

"Probably the ones with thrones," Dimitri replied.

"Looks to me like they all got shields on 'em, keep out assassiners."

Despite his surroundings, Dimitri laughed. "Assassiners, Jax? Is that different from an assassin?"

"Ah, shut up!" Jax's voice was a snarl on the vox. "Just cuz I'm a little—what the hell? Is that a robot?"

Dimitri looked around to one of the balconies and spotted a man so covered in cybernetic implants that any flesh possibly remaining was invisible. In fact, he seemed to be melded with the chair he sat upon by an abundance of cables. His head was overly large, dominated by dangling mechadentrites and multifaceted eyes. His retinue looked about the same, though on a smaller scale and with more skin.

"That must be the Fabricator General," Dimitri explained.

"Robot Man," Jax simplified. "Who else is here?"

Dimitri looked around the balconies, naming off what he knew. "The one with the judge's robes is the Grand Provost Marshal of the Arbites. The priest-looking guy is probably the Ecclesiarch of the Ministorum. Next to him is the Master of the Administratum…"

"What? Why'd ya stop?"

Dimitri stared at the next balcony. Unlike the others, this one did not have a crowd of people. A lone warrior stood there, taller and broader than a Space Marine even without armor. A spear half again his height rested on the wall next to him, but Dimitri was sure he didn't need it; he looked capable of killing with his bare hands.

"The Captain General of the Custodes," he breathed.

"Custawhat?"

Before Dimitri could explain, the Master of the Administratum spoke up. His voice, amplified by some means hidden from view, made Dimitri feel small. "Inquisitor Tripe, your subjects do not kneel."

For the first time, Dimitri realized that Tripe was on a knee, bowing so low that his chest nearly grazed the tiled floor. Suddenly, he felt very stupid.

"They are amazed, your excellence, to be given audience by such great men."

"Do not presume that such an ill-prepared lie would work here, Inquisitor," warned the Arbites Marshal. "You are in the company of greatness. We see through such trivial falsehoods."

"Your men fail to show respect!" boomed the Ecclesiarch. "This is sinful!"

Up on his throne, the Master leaned forward. "Indeed. This is troubling. We've waited long for your presentation, but it appears that a breach in protocol has occurred. I'm afraid that your petition is now void. Be gone."

Tripe started to reply, to plead, perhaps, but Jax beat him to it.

"Hey jackass!" he shouted. "Kickin' us out'd be a big mistake!"

The Ecclesiarch stood up. "Blasphemer! You speak out of turn!"

"So what, preacher man?" Jax shot back, his suit's speakers matching the High Lords' volume. "Where I come from, we don't bother dickin' around with formal kneelin' and the like. Rather we just had an honest brawl between folk and got this all out the way so we can get down to business."

"I agree," boomed the Captain General. Gathering his spear, the Custodes hero dropped from his balcony and plummeted to the floor, landing with a thud. He stood to his full height and strode forward, eyes locked onto Jax. "All this politicking is quite boring. To speak plainly is honorable, the way of a warrior. I can appreciate your frankness. After all, we are here to talk of battle prowess, not of honorifics." He stopped mere feet from Jax's chest. "What is your name?"

Tripe stepped forward. "He is-"

"I did not ask you, Inquisitor," he said, fixing Tripe with a glare. Like a whipped animal, Tripe took a few steps back.

"Name's Fred Jax, Confederate Alpha Squadron," came the inevitable reply, complete with offered handshake.

To Dimitri's surprise, the Captain General shook with Jax. "I am Valdmon Codmauchan, Captain General of the Adeptus Custodes." Valdmon looked back up at the Master of the Administratum. "Xanthius, I believe you are in error to eject them from this meeting. They shall stay."

Xanthius started to object, but then stopped, leaving Dimitri with the feeling that some vital piece of inside information had passed between the two Lords.

With a final conviction, Xanthius pronounced, "We shall begin the trials."

That sent the Ecclesiarch into a tizzy involving lots of negative religious terms ending in y. Finally, the collective glares of the other High Lords shut him up, but only after he pronounced that everyone in the room would burn in a special level of warp-hell.

"Now then," Xanthius said, "let us begin with a test of martial prowess. Valdmon?"

The Captain General nodded and turned to Jax. "Confederate—"

"We gonna fight?"

Valdmon nodded. "It is important that we evaluate your battle abilities."

"Awesome."

Dimitri looked at Tripe. "Um, do I help?"

"No," the Inquisitor replied, then added, "Well, only if it looks like he's going to die."

"Great."

The two warriors backed off of one another, each scanning the other for weaknesses. When they were ten feet apart, they stopped and squared off. Valdmon held his spear at his side, while Jax stood with both arms hanging limp. There was silence for a long moment, and then they sprang.

**Author's Note: And then they fight! Or, they will fight. Next week.  
**

**The reason I'm a whole day late (phf, like its the first time) is that a freak snow storm hit my area. Seriously. Look it up, a damn blizzard hit northeast Kansas on the last two days of spring break. I was out shoveling snow during the night and didn't have time to finish and post this, so I worked on it when I got home today. I'm very tired. A bit late, but I'd be damned if I was going to wait another six days to update!**

**This was mainly a character development chapter, especially with Gort and K'han. The latter won't become a main character, though, so don't get attached to him. He's just in these chapters so you're familiar with him for later. I hope Gort's scene cleared up why he likes humans. I tried to do it without it being a lot of boring exposition, but I don't know if it was clear enough. Tell me if you understood, okay?  
**

**In other news, I got to read the new Blood Angels Codex the other day. The lore (as is normal for GW stuff) was awesome, but what the hell is with that army list?! Deep striking Land Raiders?! How the hell does that even work!? I get dropping in Dreadnoughts and the like, but a Land Raider? I know they can take a hit, but being dropped in? That's a silly notion.  
**

**And if you don't play the table top game, ignore that whole thing.**

**Tell me what you thought, liked, didn't like, and whatnot. See you next week.  
**


	12. Chapter 12: Trials

Jax barreled forward in his customary locomotive fashion, a tactic that had seen Orks pulverized and a Space Marine sergeant beat into the ground. Dimitri knew that if Jax connected with his target with that much force, he could break it in half.

In this case, though, he never connected.

Valdon moved with a speed and economy of motion that put eldar harlequins to shame, darting out of the way of Jax's charge and palm striking the Confederate in the shoulder. There was the sound of steel snapping and Jax stumbled, barely catching himself in time to mount a defense. Valdon was on him in an instant, fists hammering Jax's armor fast as bolter fire.

Jax put up an arm to ward off the attacks, an arm that Valdon promptly grabbed and used like a lever. He threw Jax like a sack of potatoes, the Confederate's armored form bouncing to a stop ten meters away on a spiderweb of cracked tile.

"You're too slow," said the Captain General, "Get faster."

"Yeah," Jax said, his voice more surprised than hurt. A hiss of hydraulics emitted from his suit, and Dimitri knew he was gearing up to take the Custodes commander's advice. "Now I get why you ain't in armor."

"No," Valdon said, his eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly, "You really don't."

Jax got to his feet and stalked toward Valdon, fists held ready. The Custodes didn't move, hands held at his sides, watching Jax's advance.

The Confederate lurched forward again, with more care in his footing. Punches flew, fast as lighting, and Valdon backed off, his body weaving back and forth to dodge the strikes. The combatants moved across the chamber, a blur of white armor and black feathers.

There was the slap of steel kissing skin and Valdon grunted, hopping back from the strike and lashing out with a high kick. Jax dodged it at the last second and punched Valdon in the knee. The Custodes rolled with the blow and came around into Jax's flank, delivering a series of powerful blows to the Terran's stomach.

Jax wrapped an elbow around Valdon's neck and punched toward his face. Valdon jerked his head back, avoiding the punch, and kneed the Confederate in the gut. Jax fell back and took a second kick full-on, denting his chest plate and knocking him to the ground. Valdon moved in, picked Jax up under the arms, and threw him into the wall beneath one of the balconies with a brick-breaking thud.

Jax slid to the ground and didn't move for a second.

"You're still too slow," Valdon said, "Get faster."

Slowly, Jax picked himself back up. He pulled up his visor and spat a glob of bloody phlegm onto the floor, earning a scoff from the Ecclesiarch. Even from across the chamber, Dimitri could hear the blaring malfunction alarms as his suit notified him of failures.

"Is this the point where I jump in because he's in mortal danger?" Dimitri asked.

Tripe replied without looking away from the fight. "No. Wait a moment."

"You want faster?" Jax asked. Pain was now evident in his tone, as was anger. "I'll show you faster."

The flak pistol came out. Jax reached for it, and a red beam smashed into his shoulder, throwing him back against the wall again, the steel sloughing off the under armor in layers.

Valdon lowered his spear, the lastip steaming in the cool of the senate chamber. How in the world he'd managed to move and grab it from the floor faster than Jax could draw was beyond Dimitri's comprehension.

"Faster," he repeated, setting the spear back down.

Jax grunted and the ruined shoulder pad sprang off on pressure bolts. Beneath, the heat had melted away much of the working layer, but he seemed still capable of moving the limb.

Dimitri looked to Tripe. "How about now?"

"Yes. Go."

Dimitri was moving before he consciously thought about it, legs pushing him toward Valdon. He reached up in an awkward punch, ready to catch the unaware Custodes in a swipe to the side of the head.

Then Valdon was gone. Dimitri moved past where he had been and took a foot to the back of the helmet, sending him end for end to a stop on his back. He looked up and saw Valdon had barely moved, and still wasn't paying him any attention. It was like he hadn't even attacked.

"Confederate, get up."

Jax stood up and slid his visor back down. "Dimitri?" he asked, his voice coming in over the vox. "Stay outta this. Man ain't gonna kill me."

"Yes he will!" Dimitri countered. "He is the head of the Custodes, the man responsible for the Emperor's protection! He is the most powerful warrior in the Imperium! Where do you get off assuming he isn't going to kill you?"

"Cuz we're practicin'," Jax said. He was walking toward Valdon again. "Now, check this out." In exterior speak, he pointed past the Captain General and exclaimed, "What the hell is that?"

Valdon fell for it, turning partially around to look, taking his eyes off the opponent completely, allowing Jax to strike. The punch came fast and hard, landing with a hard smack against…

…Valdon's glove.

The Custodes looked back at Jax and shook his head, then threw the Confederate to the ground.

"Check what out, Jax? The part where you get laid out again? Is that the part you wanted me to check out?"

"Ah, shut up Dimitri."

Valdon placed one booted foot on Jax's chest, then leaned down and looked him in the visor. "Still too slow."

Jax surged up and slammed his visor into Valdon's face. Glass shattered, shards scrapping into the Custodes's face. Groaning in pain, the Captain General kicked Jax out from under him and stepped back. One of his eyes was bloody from the attack and part of one cheek was bleeding from a score of shallow gouges.

Carefully, he dislodged a finger-sized shard from his eye and blinked away the blood. "I did not expect you to sacrifice your advanced vision technology so readily," he said, walking over and helping Jax to his feet. "That was a gamble. The fact that you recognized it was necessary is impressive."

"Well, thanks," Jax said. "You're damn good yerself. We'll have to do that again sometime."

Valdon nodded. "I honestly hope to." He turned and looked up at the Master of the Administratum. "Xanithos, I judge the subject to be of adequate martial prowess."

The Master nodded, deep in contemplation. Whatever he and the Captain General were having a not-conversation about just had another development.

"Very well," he said, "On with the trials."

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 12: Trials_

* * *

Jax pried the broken remains of his helmet off and dropped it on the ground. "Don't need that much no more. Tripe, we got a replacement?"

"On Mars."

"Well, shit." The Confederate helped Dimitri up and gave his shoulder a good natured thunk. "Thanks. Next time, you might wanna use a gun."

"At least I still have a helmet."

"Maybe so, but who took down the big bad super trooper?"

Dimitri noticed the so-called super trooper had remained on the chamber floor instead of taking his leave back to the balcony. The action, or rather, lack thereof, was clear in its meaning: Valdon was on their side, and he wanted his fellow Lords to know it.

Curious, Dimitri turned to Tripe. "Inquisitor, just what are these trials they keep referring to?"

"Yeah!" Jax said, "If I'm gonna get my ass kicked again, mind tellin' me first?"

Tripe opened his mouth, but Valdon beat him to it. "They are a set of tests meant to determine Jax's readiness to become an officially sanctioned saint. Each corresponds to a different High Lord." He looked at Tripe. "You failed to explain this?"

Tripe bristled at the disdain in the Captain General's voice. "I'll have you know I've worked years for this! Years of very important work, pouring over words written by His magnificence for 20 years! I-"

The Inquisitor's words ended in a huff as Valdon punched the air from his lungs and sent him barreling across the room. "And I've guarded His throne for a thousand more than that," he stated. "Don't be so melodramatic."

Jax said, "What's in each test?"

"I must say that I am curious to find that out myself."

As if on queue, a burst of machine code emitted from the balcony to their left. It started as just a burst, but quickly grew out of control and became a sort of drawn out oar of beeps, burps, and boops. If he were being nice, Dimitri would have said that the Fabricator General sounded like a metallic fart.

Thankfully for both him and his suit's struggling translator, one of the machineman's adepts stepped forth and spoke in clear Gothic. "The High Fabricator General of the Adeptus Mechanicus has spoken, and decrees that his portion of the trials has largely been decided before hand thanks to the knowledge passed down to him from Mars, where specialists are even now pursuing work on the line of combat suits. His lordship gives his consent for the possible saint.

"Also, he wishes an answer from the Confederate on a certain matter: do you honor the Omnisiah in all things and pay homage to his mechanical beneficence with all your actions?"

"Absotively posilutely," Jax said, not missing a beat.

Another burst of machine code, then, "The High Fabricator General of the Adeptus Mechanicus says 'okay'."

Jax looked over at Dimitri and grinned. "See? Ain't a thing to it."

* * *

The Eastern Fringe

* * *

K'han rotated the holographic image in the tank before him and pulled the magnification back. "This is Ro'Taro, an Imperial world on the western side of the Third Sphere. It is our hunting ground." He turned to face the rest of the cadre. His soldiers watched him from their seats in the briefing auditorium, each looking at him with doubting eyes. The gue'vesa distrusted him openly, and even the t'au who had served with him before doubted his abilities at such a high rank. "It is an ocean planet with little military value. It is no threat to us.

"However, according to an intercepted distress signal, an external force has attacked Ro'Taro. The cha'yt have invaded and if they gain a foothold there, they will be able to strike deeper into our Empire." K'han pointed to the holograph, highlighting key areas on its surface. "The world is dotted by several resorts suspended above the ocean on anti-gravity drives."

"Who supplied this information?" called a Shas'ui sitting in the front row.

K'han didn't reprimand him, not verbally anyway. Instead, he shot a glare at the man that spoke more than words ever could. "Water caste dignitaries, the same dignitaries now captured and held in thrall on the world." He pointed to one of the resorts. "They are being held here, along with Aun'Shar'es."

The mention of a captive Ethereal drew several shouts of pledged vengeance from the t'au members of the cadre and shrugging neutrality from the gue'vesa. K'han waited for the commotion to die down, careful to keep his façade of non-caring up, before speaking again.

"This will be a simple matter of infiltration and extraction, deploying by Manta. This mission must go perfectly, and to that end, I want each team to learn the scans of the battlefield by heart." K'han lifted a fist to the air. "For the T'au'va!"

The t'au belted the salute with vigor, the gue'vesa mumbled it. As they filed out to go begin the drilling that would keep them busy till reaching Ro'Taro, Feg'at stepped up behind K'han.

"They still don't trust you," he said.

K'han sighed and turned, flipping the holo-projector off. "Well, I suppose the feeling is mutual. Hopefully this mission will change that."

* * *

Terra

* * *

To Dimitri, a series of tests by the High Lords of Terra sounded quite enigmatic. The questions asked in such trials must surely be long, complex and strangely allusive things, designed to bring out the inner-self of the individual being quizzed, so as to better be judged by the all-powerful men above.

He did not expect this.

"You are in an alleyway," started the Grand Provost Marshall of the Adeptus Arbites. "There is little light, and a door in front of you. What do you do?"

Jax frowned, deep in thought. "I kick it down and go in with my gun ready."

"A man is in the corner, weeping about how he killed his family but didn't mean to do it. Justice must be done here, so—"

"I shoot him," Jax blurted. "I shoot him a lot."

"Why?"

The Confederate squared himself with the Marshall. "Man kills his family's a man who ain't got no humanity left. Man like that's better off dead. That's justice."

The Marshall nodded, smiling. "Well, it appears our thoughts on the matter are one in the same." He turned to the Master of the Administratum. "Xanithos, I declare my support of the Confederate."

"Noted, Provost Marshall."

Jax grinned at Dimitri. "Easy enough."

"I don't believe this," Dimitri said, "I took tests like that when I was at the Schola."

"Surprised?" rumbled Valdon.

Dimitri nodded. "Yes, Captain General. I thought the High Lords of Terra would ask harder questions."

"I suppose you did." Valdon crossed his arms. "That is because you think too highly of the Imperium."

"How do you mean, sir?"

"These men you see before you, they are indeed powerful. But they are not the head of the Imperium. There is but one true master of mankind, and his tenets are those followed by these proxies." Valdon looked directly at Dimitri. "Your friend, Jax, was ruled on before even stepping foot in this chamber. No evidence need be heard. He will be recognized, because to not do so would go against the word of the Emperor."

Tripe perked up at that news. "You mean, it was already decided?"

"Yes." The Custodes leader's mouth turned into a thin smile. "For an Inquisitor, you really lack in intelligence."

The Ecclesiarch stood up. "I will not offer a test to this cretin. No matter what my vote, I will be overruled, and as such will not be party to such a blasphemous, heretical hearing! Xanithos, I take my leave of this treachery!" True to his words, the Ecclesiarch stalked from his balcony, retinue in tow.

When he was gone, Xanithos spoke. "And with that, we come to me." He looked down from his throne at Jax, who still stood at the center of the chamber. "Confederate, I see no problem with granting you sainthood. However, I do have my own kind of trial."

"I'm game."

"That is good to hear. I have a daughter. Well, I have sixty daughters, but I speak now of my youngest, Marie." Xanithos looked weary as he continued. "She fancies herself an Inquisitor."

"Oh, I had no idea, Master," said Tripe. "Congratulations on your daughter joining our order."

"She hasn't." Xanithos looked even more tired. "All the reports she files go directly to me. In actuality she has no power, but the work keeps her happy. To keep her safe, I've assigned her to investigating chaos cults on Morahame."

At that, Dimitri laughed out loud. "Morahame is the most popular pleasure world in the Ultima Segmentum. What kind of cult could possibly breed there?"

"None," Xanithos answered. "And that's exactly why I sent her there. I care not about your approval of my methods. My daughter is safe."

"Not anymore, I reckon," Jax said.

Xanithos nodded. "She has sent me weekly astropathic reports, mostly detailing with the executions of groundskeepers she deemed heretics. Her last report contained the preliminaries of an investigation into the governor's own court. That was over three weeks ago."

"You think the governor got worried and had her killed?" Tripe asked.

This time, Valdon answered. "No. All contact from the planet has been severed, not just from Marie. Something has gone wrong."

"Then send a battlefleet," Dimitri said. He wasn't trying to be sarcastic; the possessions of a High Lord had warranted full-scale invasion on multiple occasions. "That should break up whatever is attacking."

"Too much interference in the area. Between rampant tyranid splinter fleets, tau expansionism, and ork raids, there is simply too much for the Segmentum fleet to deal with," Xanithos explained. "We need something smaller, a strike force, so to speak."

Jax simplified, "Us."

"Yes. Retrieve my daughter, and you shall have your sainthood."

Jax looked back at Dimitri. "Whatcha think?"

"You have to do it!" Tripe butted in.

"Shut up," Jax snapped. "Dimitri, whatcha think we should do?"

Dimitri hated the idea of charging out across the galaxy to get one girl, especially since it meant leaving the rest of a planet to die. However, he didn't see much choice in the matter. Arguing with a High Lord didn't seem like a good idea.

He simply nodded.

Jax turned back. "Okie-dokie, we're on board. You got a ship?"

"My equerries will handle that," Xanithos said, "They will meet you outside."

Taking the hint, Jax saluted, turned on his heel and headed away, pausing to regard Valdon with a nod. The Captain General returned the gesture and moved to the side, allowing Dimitri and Tripe past. When the trio had left, he looked up to the Master of the Administratum.

"We should give him the rank."

Xanithos nodded. "Indeed. Did you see the way he spoke with the other?"

"Yes. That one holds much sway over him."

"Valdon, do you think they'll be successful?"

Quietly, the Captain General looked back at the closed door, as if still watching the Confederate's party. "When you fight someone, you get a sense of the man unequaled by any other kind of interaction. I've become an expert of judging men that way, and based on that, I know for certain your daughter will be returned."

* * *

Tripe was quiet during the flight back to Mars, only speaking on the matter of the ship that would be taking them to Morahame, and even then only briefly. Being made the fool in front of his superiors had clearly affected him. So when they landed on Mars and Tripe made the announcement that he would not be going with them, Dimitri was not surprised.

"Shame to see ya go, Inquisitor," Jax said, shaking the man's hand. "We'll be speakin' every so often though, right?"

"That we will," Tripe said. "But till then, I suppose this is goodbye and good luck."

Dimitri didn't shake his hand, but instead settled for a nod. "Lord Inquisitor."

"Guardsman Vlasna."

Tripe headed away into his shuttle, closing the airlock behind him. Jax leaned over and whispered, "Why didn't you shake his hand?"

"Too much slime," Dimitri said plainly.

Jax didn't get it. Not at first. Then he started laughing and smacked Dimitri on the shoulder. For the first time ever, the roughness of the action didn't throw his joint out of alignment, and he found yet another reason to appreciate the CMC armor.

As Tripe's shuttle took off, Castarius and Gort appeared behind them. The Techmarine saluted Jax and said, "There is a _Lunar_-class cruiser in low orbit requesting your presence. I must say I am confused as to why."

"Yah, wut's wit dat?"

Jax did the talking. "High Lord Xanax—"

"Xanithos," Dimitri corrected.

"—gave us that ship to rescue his daughter."

Castarius took the information in stride. "Understood. If either of you are in need of more armor parts, I have loaded quite a few onto a shuttle for transportation up to the cruiser." He looked directly at Jax. "I trust you can see to the repairs well enough?"

"Eh, yeah, I can," Jax smiled. "But I think you'd be better fer it. How 'bout coming with us?"

"My duties as Keeper are—"

"Keeper Schmeeper!" Jax exclaimed. "You come with us, I can tell ya some more 'bout this armor you've been keeping clean all these years."

"Give me a moment to give instructions to my menials for work while I'm away," Castarius said.

The Techmarine turned on his heel and left the chamber, leaving Gort behind. The Ork looked at them and grinned. "'Ey."

"Hey yerself," Jax said.

"Did you ever learn anything about your past?" Dimitri asked.

"Yup. I'z born in a tube an' such. Had me brain booby trapped an' the like ta mess wit da Boss's Waaagh! when it got strong enuff."

"Sounds like there's a story behind that."

"Nah, dat's about it."

Jax checked the catch on his Impaler. "Well, yer coming with us too. Got everything?"

"Ya, got me bitz an' such right 'ere." Gort hefted the pack slung across his shoulders. "So, we'z gonna gittin' back a little humie, eh?"

"Yup, typical damsel in distress op," Jax said. "We'll be in and out before you can say 'oh shit I got me a spike in the gut!'"

Dimitri stared at him. "Let's hope."

**Author's Note: There you have it: the prelude to our next adventure. I won't drag this note out. I hope you liked it.  
**

**In the next chapter, we're going to start a two-to-three chapter arc dealing with getting Xanithos's daughter. Another chapter will be up next weekend (either Saturday or Sunday, I can't be sure on these things anymore) so I hope you all check that out.**

**Oh yeah, and we're almost to a hundred reviews. Remember to give those out. It shows support not just for me (which I thank you for everyday) but also for the story. Reviews let people know that they won't be wasting their time. So if you like it, say so and help convert more readers!**

**And on that note, later.  
**


	13. Chapter 13: Hammer's Fall

A plethora of colors, some real, some not, swirled around prow of _Hammer's Fall_ as it sliced through the empyrean. Powered forth by a healthy reactor and shielded by a Geller field, the Lunar-class cruiser brushed the unnatural energies of the warp aside. The unseen claws of desperate daemon-things raked at its shielding, but to no avail.

In the ship's command-level embarkation deck, Dimitri found himself trying to blot out the thought of the hellish death outside the hull by focusing on his meal. Unfortunately, despite its pukish color and leathery boot taste, the food did little to distract him, and he found himself picturing an abomination of red flesh, multiple eyes and way too many swords.

Suddenly angered, Dimitri threw his tray across the hanger where it splattered across the front of his CMC armor.

The suit was disassembled in an arming carousel brought from Mars, the various plates and underworkings held in limbo by pressure clamps. Cables ran from the fusion pack to the decking, recharging the power plant with a direct feed from the ship's reactor. His Impaler was on a tray nearby, alongside enough ammo to fight off a tyranid invasion.

"My suit," Dimitri muttered, staring into the polarized visor. "It doesn't feel like it."

"That's because ya ain't painted it yet!"

Jax flopped down on the crate next to him, the weight of his armored form denting the lid. The Confederate was smoking a fat cigar and drinking from an aged bottle of whiskey, both of which had most likely come from Captain Brigham.

"Painting it?" Dimitri asked.

"Yup," Jax said. He offered over the bottle, but Dimitri declined. Shrugging, he went on. "Everybody gets their suit the same way: grey. Painting your suit's a tradition, somethin' to be honored."

"Throne, Jax, did you just talk about honor?"

"I have my moments. So, what color you got in mind?"

Dimitri shrugged. "I hadn't really thought about it."

"Well, take yer time. Just make sure it's painted before goin' into combat. Being a Greyback on yer first op is bad luck."

"I'll take it to heart." Dimitri looked over at Jax and the way he moved in his suit. "Do you ever charge yours?"

"Huh?"

"You're in your armor constantly. Doesn't it run out of power?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Shit."

Dimitri blinked. "Shit?"

"Shit," Jax confirmed. "My suit's an older model. Alpha Squadron issue. Designed to run long black ops. Power systems are more thrifty-like, and can recharge from the user's waste. So, shit."

"So what are you doing when you go to the bathroom?"

Jax unlatched something near his lower back and threaded out a long hose. "Getting more fuel."

"That's gross."

Jax seemed offended. "Hey, it don't just gotta be my shit. Hell, I found that it'll run on just about any damn thing you put in it, so long as it ain't too solid." He held up fingers as he continued. "Cow piss, beer, mess hall cookin'. Guess if it can be broke down, it'll run on it."

Hating his own curiosity, Dimitri asked, "What's the worst thing you've run it on?"

Jax leaned in. "There was this one time, during the Hackdirt Rebellions, where my platoon was cut off. Just us and a battalion of Rebs, goin' at it in the trenches. When we started runnin' low on power, we started bleedin' the prisoners into our tanks to keep killin'."

"Throne, that's horrific!" Dimitri exclaimed. "Really?"

"Hell no!" Jax thumped him on the shoulder. "I ain't never put blood in my tank. Well, none that was _human_, leastways. Can't speak fer what I done to the zerg, though."

Jax's gaze became distant, as it often did when conversation leaned toward the wars he had fought in a previous life. These were the only times Dimitri wanted to change the topic to something besides Jax, and he found it hard each time.

"Have you seen Gort around lately?" he asked.

Jax shook his head. "Ain't seen him since he was arguin' with Castarius this mornin'. Probably on the firin' range, I'd reckon."

Dimitri pushed the topic. "Want to go see what he's doing?"

"Sure."

Jax stood up and, as usual, led the way from the hanger, Dimitri in tow. Outside, the warp howled and the ship moved on.

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 13: Hammer's Fall_

* * *

_Hammer's Fall_, like any Imperial warship, was a space-borne city. Like a city, it was clearly tiered in the status of its citizenry. A solid ninety percent of the populous lived throughout the ship in the engine room, cargo bays, and an obscene array of gundecks. The officers and important people lived in the command decks, located at the upper rear of the ship in a cathedral-like structure.

This was where Jax's party had been lodged, with the ship's ruling class. The Captain had warned them against venturing below the 6th deck security cordon, where things were apparently more savage. So far, they had taken the advice.

A security rating awaited them at the range in full plate, shotgun held ready. The kid looked nervous.

"What's going on here?" Dimitri asked.

The rating looked into the room at his back. "They're still going at it. You've gotta do something."

Dimitri grabbed the man. "Calm down. What's happening?"

"I don't know!" The rating shook out of his grasp and ran off. "I'm getting out of here!"

"Weird," Jax muttered, heading inside. "Well, let's go see what's got him spooked."

The 3rd deck firing range was a large space. Arched gun points looked down long stretches of tile that ended in plywood targets. Even quiet as it now was, the range still seemed to echo with a report of its own.

And with the sound of voices.

"Git ya claw off me snazzgun, Beaky!"

"Beaky? What does that even mean?"

"Means ya Astartes lot got a bunch o' beaks on ya helms! Now gimme back me blastin' snazzgun!"

"This weapon must be sanctified! Your actions with it have disgraced its machine spirit!"

"I'z gonna disgrace your spirit when I kick ya arse and piss on ya body!"

"Your threats do not amuse me, xenos. I am a Space Ma-"

"WAAAGH!"

Gort and Castarius tumbled out a gun booth, the former smashing a grubby hand into the latter's face. The snazzgun flew out of Castarius's grasp and landed outside the grasp of both combatants. Good, at least now they wouldn't be able to shoot each other.

"Shouldn't we break them up?" Dimitri asked.

"Nah," Jax replied, "Let 'em have at it. Better they get it all out now than in a shit fight."

Castarius used his mechanical arm to punch Gort across the jaw, breaking a tooth. The ork responded with a series of pounds against the Techmarine's chest. He pulled off the shoulder pad bearing the skullcog insignia of the Mechanicus and threw it across the room before turning back to beating the Marine.

With a superhuman roar, Castarius threw Gort to the side and got to his feet, drawing a combat blade. Gort jumped up and pulled out his chainaxe, the two combatants facing off.

"Oh, weapons."

"Huh."

"How about now? Break it up?"

"Yeah."

Jax stepped in ahead of him and grabbed Gort around the shoulders. Dimitri got in front of Castarius and held up his arms, waving the angered Astartes down. For a second, it looked like Castarius was going to cut him in half, but the anger eventually cooled.

"I am fine," he said, sheathing the blade. "I apologize for my misconduct."

Dimitri shook his head. "No, I can see why Gort got you angry. He does that sometimes."

"C'mon, Boss! Lemme at 'im!"

"No!" Jax punched him in the face. "Calm the fuck down!"

Gort struggled against Jax's grip. "Jus' a little choppin! It'd do 'im good!"

"Shut! The! Fuck! Up!" Jax roared, punctuating each word with a knee to the gut.

Gort wheezed and collapsed in a heap. Jax stood back. "There, think he ought to be a bit more calmsome now."

"I should think so," Dimitri agreed.

"Now then, y'all got this out yer systems?"

Castarius declared his thoughts. "This creature is a xenos. If it cannot be purged, it must be beaten into servitude."

"Oh, I'z gonna show you a beatin' Beaky!" Gort started to stand up again.

Jax spun around and faced Gort. "No. This fightin' with the two of you is stoppin' right now. I don't got time for infighting and the like."

"But he's a xenos!" Castarius shouted.

"And yer a fuckhead!" Jax replied. "To my way of thinkin', that don't make the two of ya much different. Ya both got jobs to do on this mission, so I suggest you do them."

"Waaagh?" Gort asked.

Jax shook his head. "No Waaagh. Not yet. When we get to, um, the uh…"

"Morahame," Dimitri said.

"Yeah, there. We get there, we'll have a Waaagh. Till then, keep yerself to yerself. If y'all can't get along, then don't talk to each other. Ship's a big place."

Castarius glared at Jax for a long moment, and then headed out of the range. When he was gone, Gort walked over and picked up his snazzgun. "Stupid Beaky tryin' ta mess wit me flash."

"Shut up," Jax snarled.

He stalked over to the nearest gun booth, pulled out his Impaler, and squeezed off his entire clip. Downrange, a row of targets were ripped to pieces. The gargoyle head attached to the arch spasmed from the sudden burst of activity, trying to tally up the hits. In the end, it exploded from the strain.

"You alright?" Dimitri asked.

Jax took a deep breath. "Yeah, I'm good." He looked back. "Gort, never get in a fight with him again."

"Or what, Boss?"

"Or I'm gonna shoot you full of holes."

"Lotsa dakka?"

"Yeah, lot's of dakka."

"Sure fing, Boss."

* * *

The Bridge, Minutes Later

* * *

"And, go!"

At the behest of their Captain, the two junior officers lunged at each other, sabers whipping out in classic fencing thrusts. The blade tips connected with a ting and both fighters bounced away from the other's counterattack, rocking on the balls of their feet for better positioning.

Captain Euphratise Brigham clapped from his command throne at the center of the bridge, laughing at the inherent sport of the duel. The Captain was a big man, the product of the careful breeding between two of Terra's most wealthy families. His noble background was evident in his attire; heavy robes, rings, an ornate sword, and enough expensive pistols to fight a small war.

Where his excesses were most apparent, however, was in his collection of port. Bottle upon bottle of liquor from across the galaxy ringed his throne, contained within fine wood racks and tended to by a duo of rag-wielding servitors. Brigham was known throughout the fleet for his port, and had a reputation of only sharing it with men that met a particular set of standards.

Apparently, Jax met them.

"Confederate!" Brigham roared upon seeing Jax enter, Dimitri in tow, "Care for another bottle?"

Jax shook his head. "Nah, ain't finished the last one yet."

"Nonsense! Servitor, get him another! Valhallan vintage, M39!"

The dotting droid pulled the indicated bottle from the rack, cushioning it with a rag, and made its way over to Jax. Reluctantly, Jax took the bottle in one giant hand and popped the cork.

Taking a swig, he smiled up at the Captain. "It's good."

"Of course it is!" Brigham said. He stood from his throne and stepped down to Jax. "I've turned down fleet admirals and traders of the highest esteem that asked for access to my collection, but not you! Let it never be said that Captain Euphratise Brigham did not give his friends the best!"

"Here, here!" called an officer. In his wake, several men clapped their approval.

Dimitri was less interested. "What are they doing?" he asked, point up to the officers having a sword fight.

"Dueling," Brigham answered.

"Yes, but why?"

Brigham frowned, and Dimitri thought he knew why. While Jax had been accepted like long-lost family, Dimitri was looked down upon as a tag-along. He wasn't sure if it was because Brigham felt threatened by someone else close to Jax or because he was perceived as the quiet, contemplative one.

Personally, Dimitri hoped it was the latter. At least that was truer.

"Dueling is a time-honored tradition," Brigham explained, "Young men are by nature aggressive, even more so in a constrictive environment. Dueling allows them a professional and artistic outlet for that aggression. Besides, since it's mandatory, it weeds out the weaklings."

"And its grand fun to watch, I suppose," Dimitri muttered.

Brigham nodded. "It is on occasion quite enjoyable. What do you think, Jax?"

"I think that the guy on the right's about to kick some ass."

Everyone turned back to the duel in time to see the prophecy come true. The right-side combatant parried a swipe, stepped into his opponent's reach, delivered an elbow to the jaw and followed it up with a stab that broke sternum and ended up plunged through the man's back. Blood jetted into the air and the bridge cheered.

Slowly, the victor lowered his opponent to the deck and saluted his Captain with his crimson-stained blade.

Brigham howled with laughter and returned the salute. "Well done, Lieutenant! Well done! Come get a drink!"

A crew of servitors scurried out and started methodically stripping the corpse.

The victorious Lieutenant took a prepared shot glass from one of Brigham's bartending servitors, bowed, and knocked it back. Replacing the glass and sheathing his sword, he headed back to work in the navigation pit.

"You have 'em do that a lot?" Jax asked.

"As often as is necessary," Brigham answered. "Now then, did you need something?"

Dimitri tore his gaze away from where the dead man was being dumped into a trash chute. "We just wanted an estimated time to our arrival."

"Aye." Brigham snapped his fingers, summoning an adjutant with a data slate. He looked at it and reported. "Last word from the navigatorium puts us at two days out. That said, the warp is an unstable entity, and this report is from this morning. If you want a better estimate, you might want to talk to the Navigators."

"The navigawhats?"

"Will do," Dimitri said, heading away. "Thank you, Captain."

Jax headed after him, hefting one of his bottles in salute. "Thanks for the beer!"

They left the bridge and hopped on the thruway, letting it move them down the corridors on quiet conveyer motors. The thruway was something new on shipboard travel, at least in Dimitri's experience.

Most of the ship's he'd served on hadn't been equipped with one, but he supposed that was the difference between being a VIP on a cruiser and freight on a troop hauler. It was funny how status changed things.

"Know what?" Jax asked.

"Hmm?" Dimitri replied, idly running his fingers across the engravings on the wall beside him.

It was a recent mosaic of a space battle the _Hammer's Fall_ had taken part in during the 13th Black Crusade. Rendered in bronze, the features of torn hulls and bursts of ship-to-ship lances rose from the paneling in remarkable detail. Dimitri wondered how dramatized it was.

"I been thinking about that book you been reading."

"The Codex Astartes?"

Jax's expression changed as his ears heard something completely different, and much more vulgar. "Yeah, that. Think I could write one of them?"

That was easy. "No."

"Well, not _exactly_ like it, just something kinda like it," Jax explained. "Lots of guys you might call heroes write books and philosophize about tactics and the like. Might say I'm a kinda hero myself. So, should I do it?"

"No."

"Well why the hell not?"

Dimitri looked away from the mosaic and back at his partner. "Jax, have you ever read a book?" He saw a particular thought forming in the Confederate's head, then said, "Manuals and those perverted flip-books don't count. Only real books."

"Damn. Then no."

"So how are you going to write a book without having even read one?"

"I'll have you do it."

Dimitri would have laughed had he not seen the seriousness in Jax's face. "Okay, if we live through this next mission, I'll help you write your book."

"Again with the negativity," Jax sighed. "Why can't you just look on the bright side for once?"

"I apologize for thinking our chances are bad with an alcoholic captain who has his men duel for personal amusement."

"Hey now, the best captain I ever met was an alcoholic."

"Did you not hear the part about the meaningless gladiatorial combat?"

"Well he's got a point. It does weed out weaklings."

"It also thins the combat roster pretty quick, Jax."

The Confederate shook his head. "Whatever. We'll come through, just watch."

"Fine."

Jax was silent for a moment. They changed belt paths twice, angling down toward the navigatorium at the bottom of the ship's armored prow. Finally, he spoke. "What's a navigator?"

"A mutant that guides ships through the warp," Dimitri said.

"Mutant, huh? Thought y'all didn't take to kindly to mutants. Like the 'kill 'em on sight' kind of not to kindly."

Dimitri frowned. "It is…complicated."

"Yeah, I don't doubt that for a damn second."

"Just don't try and pull back the cloth on their forehead."

"Why?"

Dimitri looked at Jax. "Because their third eye is behind that, and if you look upon it, your soul will be stripped from your body, thrown into the empyrean, and torn apart by daemons."

Jax stared at him. "Well, okie dokie. No headband pulling."

The thruway dumped them in front of a marble slab set into an archway. Dimitri thumbed a control and the door rumbled aside, letting them into the chamber beyond.

The Navigatorium was not large, just a poorly lit dungeon with few amenities. A kitchen was set off to one side alongside two cots and a desk. A null-tank dominated the chamber, its bulky spherical form connected to the floor and ceiling by thick ropes of steel and electrical cabling.

A figure moved at the desk. "Can I help you?"

"Yes," Dimitri said, careful not to look toward the person. "Captain Brigham directed us down here to get an estimate on our travel time."

"Dimitri, she's got a headband on," Jax said, "Quit making an ass of yerself."

Dimitri looked up to see the woman had made her way into the sparse light of the lumen globes. She was young, and were it not for the black headband she wore, she would have looked completely normal. Some would say attractive.

"What did our report say this morning?" she asked irritably.

"Two days."

"Subtract half a day from that," she said, spacing the words as if speaking to a child, "and you'll have our new estimate."

"We were led to believe that circumstances may have changed."

At that, the woman Navigator scoffed. "You blunts think the warp is all so unpredictable, that the merest twitch can send a ship spiraling off course."

"That ain't the case?" Jax asked.

"Not with two prodigies of House Cardigan at the helm," came the cock-sure reply. "I am Yevina Cardigan. My brother Ulrich is in the tank."

In reply to her introduction, the null-tank let out a low beep of greeting. Dimitri found himself waving to it.

"Good meeting ya," Jax said, abruptly grabbing her hand.

Yevina seemed shocked and a little bothered by the rough gesture, but didn't complain. "I am glad to see this ship has some honorable company, and I am flattered you deigned us of enough import to visit."

Seeing Jax's look of confusion, Dimitri stepped in and tried his best at being posh. "Think nothing of it, Lady Cardigan. We merely required a current progress report, and now we shall take our leave of your chambers."

"I'm impressed by your manner, Mister…"

"Vlasna," he replied, "Dimitri Vlasna."

"Well, Dimitri Vlasna, perhaps we will meet again."

_Not if I can help it, you snotty mutant bitch_. "Perhaps we shall, ma'am."

As they left the navigatorium on the thruway, heading aft toward the embarkation deck, Jax turned to Dimitri. "What a bitchface."

"Totally."

* * *

Embarkation Deck, Later

* * *

Gort knew about paints. Colors were his thing. Well, next to shooting. And chopping. And stomping ass. So maybe colors were his fourth thing. But they were still one of his things and that counted for something.

The most important thing about colors was what they meant. Every good ork knew that different colors did different things, conferred different abilities upon the object they adorned.

Boss Jax's colors were white. That color was good for him, because he was all saintly and such and white inspired other humans. The color of his armor represented him and also helped him out with his job, so it was good.

Dimitri's suit was grey, which wasn't so good. To Gort, grey meant slow, dull, stupid, and worthless. Nothing good ever came out of something grey, so he aimed to fix that problem. And fix it he had.

Deciding what Dimitri's color should be had taken a lot of thinking and nose-picking, but eventually he had determined it based on the Guardsman's personality. Dimitri needed to keep up with Jax but also stay out of trouble. He needed to move fast, so he needed a color that kept him going fast. And every ork knew that color.

"What in the name of the Emperor is this?" Dimitri yelled upon seeing the suit.

Jax clapped Gort on the shoulder. "Good work! See Dimitri, now you don't have to go into combat as a Greyback! No bad omen!"

"But, but, why _that _color?" he asked, pointing at the still-dripping suit.

Gort grinned and thudded one of the suit's big crimson shoulder pads. "Cuz da red wunz go fasta!"

As Dimitri and Jax carried on debating Gort's actions, the ork found himself pumped up for the mission at hand. Just him, his mates, and a planet full of unknown baddies to crush. The thought made him grin.

This was going to be one right and proper Waaagh!

**Author's Note: There it is. Lots of shooting next chapter. I promise.**

**I don't have much to talk about it this note, but I would like to justify this chapter's existence. I know not a lot happened, but that isn't the point. This chapter is supposed to show characters and give you a feel for the ship they're on, since it'll be a recurring setting for a while. Obviously we did not explore the entire ship in one chapter, as that would be silly, but a good bit of it was shown.**

**Okay, that's all that was on my mind. Hope you liked the chapter. Oh, and please drop a review. I thank all of you who have reviewed so far, especially those who did last chapter. The one who spoke of this story being one of the remarkable hidden gems of 40k fanfiction was particularly eloquent, and I hope I can live up to those words. **

**Remember, the sooner this hits 100 reviews, the sooner more people start wanting to read it.**

**And now, until next Saturday, adieu.  
**


	14. Chapter 14: Old Friends

The suit came together, heavy, pressurized robotic arms assembling the underlayer, securing hoses and hoisting the fusion pack onto its mount. Next came the armor itself, the sixty-seven fortified plates of nano-forged neo-steel, all of which locked together to overlap at just the right points, creating a layer of protection better than admantium.

The armored hump snapped to the back over the vulnerable reactor and down went the helmet into the circular neck slot. That done, the restraint clamps pulled away, letting the suit stand on its own two legs. All was silent; then the fusion pack whined to life, belching twin plumes of ashen dust into the air.

Inside the heavy frame of the CMC armor, Dimitri felt the power thrum along his limbs and through the soft-link at the base of his cerebral cortex. His HUD lit up, projecting diagnostics across his visor. Status bars filled and check marks appeared alongside all major operating systems. Everything was set.

He stepped down from the arming platform and grabbed his Impaler from the rack, cycling the bolt with care. Throughout the journey he had become proficient with the weapon in the firing range, but was still unsure of how he would perform in combat.

Jax walked up to him, his own rifle clamped to his back. "Brigham says we're damn near there. Ready?"

"Yes," Dimitri replied, looking up at Jax. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. "Jax, why are you still taller than me?"

"Huh?"

"In the armor," Dimitri said, pointing at the red suit he was in. "Even when we're both suited up, you're still taller than me."

"Suit only boosts ya a foot."

"You mean to tell me you're almost two meters tall outside of your armor?"

Jax nodded. "Yup."

"How?"

"Always ate my Roid-O's for breakfast."

Dimitri stared at Jax. Jax stared at Dimitri. Across the chamber, a servitor stopped cleaning a trolley wheel to look at the two men.

"Alright," Dimitri said. "Nevermind."

"Cool deal." Jax thumped him on the shoulder. "Now let's get to it. Gort and Castarius are waiting."

Dimitri followed him across the deck, practicing slinging and whipping out his Impaler as he walked. The maneuver was difficult, like scratching the dead zone on one's back but in encased in power armor. He kept trying, feeling as though it might be the factor that determined life or death.

"Hey Dimitri, what's the deal with this dropship we're using?" Jax was talking to him over the comm. link and as his voice cut in, a window opened on Dimitri's HUD showing his face. "It any good?"

"The Valkyrie?" Dimitri replied. "It's been in service to the Imperium for millennia. Nowhere will you find a more reliable dropship."

"Sounds like what you told me about them tanks."

"And I was right! Everyone can count on the Leman Russ!"

Jax scoffed. "Yeah, to blow up. Somethin' tells me this here Valkyrie ain't gonna be much better."

"Just wait," Dimitri said, very sure of the craft's durability. "You'll like it."

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 14: Old Friends_

* * *

"Yup, I seen one of these before."

Dimitri looked from the Valkyrie to Jax. "Where?"

"Back on Dancer, blown up, sticking out the side of a building," the Confederate replied, then added, "Oh, and the crew done got themselves stuck on poles around the crash."

"Yes, but that was because the orks shot it down," Dimitri said. He thought about his words and said, "That sounded less stupid in my head."

"Reckon it did."

"But look at it!" Dimitri said, walking up to the dropship, "It's as sturdy as can be!" He thumped the wing and a missile pod fell off, hitting the deck with a dull clang.

Jax barked a humorless laugh. "Why the hell would I want to go into combat in this piece of shit? Damn thing can't even keep the guns on!"

Dimitri stepped forward, allowing Gort to move in and scoop up the missile pod. "Jax, the pilots of these things are good, best in the Navy."

"You ever been in one?" Jax asked.

"Well, no."

The Confederate turned and walked away, muttering something about finding a better way. Dimitri started to follow when he heard Gort.

"Leggo! Dis 'ere's me new dakka tube!" the ork yelled, fighting with a servitor over the missile pod. "Me snazzgun needs it!"

Dimitri shook his head and walked off before the poor deckhand droid took a chainaxe to its lobotomized brain. Ignorance was bliss, he figured.

* * *

Morahame, Primary Relaxation Spire

* * *

The garden island was burning, setting the night ablaze with the cleansing flames. Adamus watched from the balcony, his steel-shod gauntlet gripping the banister in ecstasy as he drank in the screams that emanated from the inferno below. This was the third night of sacrifice, the third of this world's floating paradises to burn, and still there were four more.

Four more nights of this feeling that gripped him. Adamus wasn't sure he could take it. Pleasure world was the word the Imperium's lapdogs used for this place. Incorrectly used, up until now.

In these flames, Morahame's sacrificial populous was experiencing a true pleasure, that of a cleansing death. Few moments were as glorious as one's body being engulfed in flame.

But alas, Adamus was no Slaaneshi cultist, and had no wish to draw pleasure from this any more than was necessary. With effort, he opened his eyes and released the banister, his moment of relaxation over.

Going back to work, he tipped his head to one side, activating his vox-bead. "_Sandalphon_, status report."

"The tau ship has been dealt with, lord." The reply, though over the vox, seemed to resonate inside his head as well, making it all the easier to hear the daemon's satisfaction. "Some of the vermin fled their dying vessel and made landfall."

"Really," Adamus pondered. He looked across the burning island to the other spires. Aside from fire and water, those constructs were the only places any survivors would be able to land. "Onto which island?"

"Yours, lord."

"Splendid. Anything else of note?"

This time, _Sandalphon_ seemed eager. "Another ship has entered the system. I can smell it."

Adamus was already moving back into the spire, the heavy boots of his Black Legion power armor denting the hardwood planks of ballrooms and plush carpet of shrine-like dining halls. "More tau come for their beloved Ethereal?"

"No, lord. Imperial, _Lunar_-class."

Adamus stopped dead. "If you're joking, _Sandalphon_—"

"I do not joke, lord," replied the daemon, "The servants of the False Emperor are here and on a course in-system."

"Very well. Keep me appraised of the situation."

"Yes, lord."

"And _Sandalphon_?"

"Lord?"

"Enjoy this one."

"Always, lord."

Adamus switched vox channels, idly drumming his fingers on the hilt of Zeruel. The daemonic weapon purred at his touch, and he suddenly felt ashamed that it had not drunk its fill on this mission.

The vox crackled and soon, the voice of Adamus's second cut through the din, forcing the link to stabilize. "War Captain?"

"Drake, _Sandalphon _has told me some unexpected emissaries from the Tau Empire have made landfall. Run a sweep of the spires. If their commander is still alive, bring me his head."

"Absolutely, War Captain," came the unconditional reply. "Rerouting teams."

"And be on alert for Imperials," Adamus said as an afterthought. "One of their cruisers is inbound."

Drake was silent a moment. "Cannot _Sandalphon _take care of it?"

"He should. But if the tau can get through him…"

"I understand, War Captain. I'll put the men on standby. All hail Chaos."

"All hail Chaos," Adamus echoed.

He switched off the vox bead entirely and moved on into a library. Or, what had been a library before Adamus's men had taken flamers to it. At the center of the room was a fallen chandelier, its wrought iron structure sticking up from the floor like a gothic skeleton. It made for a brilliantly grotesque torture tool, as Adamus and his two playthings had quickly found out.

Both the Ethereal and human woman were laid atop the structure. They'd been like this for three days, with no external forces save gravity and their own squirming to cause them pain.

So far, the spiked parts of the chandelier had sunk at most an inch into the Ethereal's grey hide, thanks to his silence and lack of any movement. Adamus almost had respect for the alien's perseverance. Not only was he still alive, but he had kept any information he knew from his captors.

The woman seemed to have a different way about her.

"You again!" she screamed upon seeing Adamus. "Let me out from here, traitor! Do you have any idea who I am?"

Adamus walked over to her. "I know exactly who you are, Inquisitor Marie Xanithos, daughter to High Lord Xanithos." He sighed. "You've told me thirty times."

He crouched down and looked at the spikes beneath her. Each one was a good six inches into her flesh, but had stopped upon touching the more resilient bone. Small runnels of blood seeped from her wounds, but not quickly enough to kill her. At this rate she would be dead within a day or so. Then why was she still able to scream at him?

"I must be doing this wrong," he muttered.

"Speak up, traitor!" came the inevitable shriek.

He fixed her with a glare from his coal-black eyes. "My apologies, Lady Vilverin, for not causing you more pain. I must admit I'm somewhat of an amateur at the art of torture, having not been trained in it. It's more of a hobby, really."

He thought for a second, and then ripped her off the spikes, electing a scream louder than when he put her there to begin with. He dropped her naked, bleeding body to the carpet and nudged her with his boot.

"Still with me, human?"

"Yes," she said with surprising force.

"You are determined, I'll give you that," he said, wrenching one of the chandelier spikes off with a metallic snap. He walked over to a burning pile of books and put the metal tip in the flame.

"However," he continued, "I do believe that it comes from the arrogance of your birthright, not from any form of true inner strength. You of the Imperium's ruling class believe yourselves untouchable."

He withdrew the spike from the flame and turned it, examining the heated tip. "Maybe you could be a good example as to why that is false."

She had just started to respond when he found a painful place for the spike.

* * *

_Hammer's Fall_, Bridge

* * *

"So there's the planet, and there's its moon," Jax said, pointing at both the objects rendered in clean, green lines. "And we're out a ways. I don't really see anything bad here."

Brigham shifted in his command throne. "Lieutenant Higgins, show him the bad, please."

The hololith rotated and magnified the image of Morahame. Collected from long range scans, the display showed plenty of orbital wreckage. Destroyed ship pieces had fallen into a gentle but slowly deteriorating orbit. Given enough years, most of it would burn up in the pleasure world's atmosphere.

"That's Imperial wreckage," Dimitri noted, pulling the structure features from the pages of books he'd read. "I see a few _Aster_-class escorts and another _Lunar_-class, like us."

Brigham nodded. "Morahame's defense fleet. There's also the wreckage of a tau vessel, much more recent."

"Tau?" Jax asked.

"They're xenos," Dimitri explained. "If they're the perpetrators here, this could be a problem."

The hololith shifted again and showed one ship moving amidst the wreckage. It was of stocky build and covered in gothic spires, each twisted and grotesque. Weapons blisters dotted the craft, easily visible even at this range, and Dimitri could see two lance weapon mounts flanking the knife-like prow.

"An Astartes strike cruiser," Dimitri muttered. He looked up at Brigham. "A survivor?"

"The culprit," the Captain replied, stabbing a finger at the hololith.

Another layer of magnification and the side of the vessel's prow became crystal clear, showing an eight pronged star with a screaming skull in the middle.

Dimitri's heart skipped a beat. "Chaos."

Jax turned. "What?"

"Chaos Space Marines," Dimitri elaborated. "The descendants of Horus and his unholy allies."

"Oh, Horus," Jax muttered. "Sumbitch."

Brigham stepped down from his throne and up to the hololith. "A strike cruiser is bad news. I don't know what legion it's from, and I don't really care. What we do know is that if we try and engage it, it'll tear us from the sky with as much effort as picking its teeth."

"So what do we do?" Dimitri asked, "We have to get planet side."

Brigham shrugged. "Sorry boys, but I can't move you in for a conventional drop. If you want to get down there, the best I can do is run the gauntlet and drop you by teleporter."

Dimitri opened his mouth to object to having his molecules torn away and rearranged on the ground, but Jax beat him to it. Also, the Confederate wasn't objecting.

"Hell yeah! I knew there was a better way then riding that shitball in the hanger." He reached out and smacked Brigham on the shoulder, the impact jarring the shipmaster and sending him into the hololith rail. "Thanks a lot, Captain Brigham. You get us into position and we'll be ready."

As Jax left the bridge, Dimitri looked at the Captain. "You don't have to do this."

"Yes, lad, I do," came the response. Brigham pointed at the strike cruiser. "An entire fleet died fighting that vessel. I aim to do better than them."

"That's insane."

Brigham shrugged. "Eh, I've heard that before. Best see to your saint."

* * *

As Dimitri and Jax walked, they saw the full breadth of the _Hammer's Fall_ in action. Officers ran the thruway, carrying orders to gun crews as the ship made ready for war. The constant thrumming of the deck increased in pitch as the engines pushed harder, propelling the vessel toward Morahame. Deep in the decks beneath them, officers beat slave gangs into compliance to move the vast array of cannons and missile racks into ready positions.

They reached the teleporter chamber just as the ship left the fourth planet's gravity well and boosted for the target. Gort and Castarius were waiting for them, the latter grimacing as he checked the teleporter's control panel.

"Lord," greeted the Techmarine, "I do not feel comfortable with this machinery. Its spirit is most displeased by how the crew has neglected it."

Jax walked over and smacked a palm into the console. "There. How's it feel now?"

Castarius was silent a moment, feeling the machine, then his eyebrows shot up. "It seems ready."

"Good," Jax replied. He walked up onto the platform and looked at Gort. "How many guns ya need, Gort?"

The ork looked at the weapons in his hands. "Whateva's 'ere."

"That's a shotgun, two stubbers, a bolt pistol and your snazzgun," Dimitri said, counting for him.

"What do ya need eight—"

Dimitri coughed, "Five."

"—five guns for?" Jax asked. "Ya only got the two arms!"

Gort thought for a moment and then said, "Options."

"Fair enough." Jax looked over at Dimitri, who was still standing on the deck outside the pad. "What's the matter? Hurry up!"

"This may seem as a shock to you, Jax, but I don't like the thought of being torn apart on a molecular level and thrown down to a planet."

"Yeah," Jax said, "That's why we ain't using that damn Valkyrie."

Dimitri sighed and stepped up on the pad. "Fine. Just promise me that if I come out a sagging heap of flesh—"

"I'll kill ya."

"Well, that's good to know."

Castarius replaced the armor on the control panel and returned it to the duty officers before joining the rest of the team. They each took up positions in a staggered skirmish line and checked their weapons.

* * *

Brigham's command throne was an expensive, complex piece of technology. During combat, the shelves that held his precious beverages lowered into the deck and were sealed in pressurized vaults, ensuring that even if hell itself opened up on the bridge, the alcohol would be safe.

Another pleasant feature of his throne was the g-compensator in the leather that kept him from being jarred around when the ship made complex maneuvers or took damage.

So now, as the forward occulus screen filled with the flash of incoming fire, Brigham took comfort in the knowledge that he wouldn't be hurt.

Still, the ship needed to be saved.

"Full force, port!" he shouted, "Give me an evasive roll!"

The order was relayed and the _Hammer's Fall_ lurched to port, its long body spinning out of the way. The hail of missiles and mass slugs tore past the starboard side hull, scarring the steel and detonating anti-fighter cannon blisters in small bursts of rupturing steel.

On the occulus screen, the enemy strike cruiser was moving across their bow amid the orbital slew of space wreckage, its starboard side presented as if it wanted to be hit.

"Full burn! Get moving firing solutions from the forward guns!"

A series of 'aye ayes' sounded and the engines thrummed, sending the ship powering toward the enemy. The strike cruiser was reloading its weapons, giving them just enough time to get past it. And with the fire he was about to rain down upon them, Brigham was sure the Chaos bastards crewing the vessel were doomed.

"Solutions calculated, sir!" sounded Higgins.

Brigham sat forward, the temptation to hammer the target into bits sending blood flushing to his head. "Fire! Burn their traitorous hides!"

The forward mass accelerators and missile arrays opened fire, sending a stream of blistering hurt across the black. The Chaos strike cruiser took the full brunt of the attack along its flank and disappeared in a bank of detonations, the occulus screen struggling to compensate for the glare.

Brigham grinned as his ship pulled past the target and into the wreckage that orbited the planet. "Good work, men. Signal the teleporter chamber and give them permission to set the team down on that big burning chunk."

"Aye, Captain."

Brigham sat back in his throne and looked at the planet below. From this height, it was clear where the enemy was located and where the teleporter would need to put Jax and his team.

"Teleporter reports team clear, Captain."

"Good. Status of the target?"

There was silence for a moment, and then the occulus screen clicked perspectives to the aft pict-recorders. The chain explosion from the _Hammer's Fall_ barrage had yet to die down, and so the target was still obscured.

"Unknown," said Higgins, "From here we can't get a—"

The smoke parted around the knife prow of the strike cruiser as it barreled out of the cloud, twin lance batteries bearing down on them like angry red eyes. The hull, aside from still being grotesque and mutated by the foul energies of Chaos, was unscathed, as was the collection of bleached bones on the bow that spelled the vessel's name.

Brigham exhaled. "Well, shit."

With power only a daemonic vessel could manage, _Sandalphon _connected with the _Hammer's Fall_.

* * *

Dimitri opened his eyes, looked down, counted two arms, two legs, and a torso, and let out the breath he'd been holding since the teleporter had started to pop with the buildup of energy.

"Shit! Where's my arm?"

Dimitri whipped around. "Jax!"

The Confederate laughed and held up ten, perfect fingers. "Gotcha."

"I hate you."

Gort stepped up to the edge of their landing zone. "Dat's a lotta fire."

Indeed it was. Around the balcony they'd landed on, the floating resort was on fire. Screams cut the night air, and Dimitri found himself turning down his suit's audio pickups to preserve his sanity.

"What the hell are they doing here?" Jax asked.

"Sacrifices," Castarius answered grimly, "The Chaos traitors throw captives to the flames as offerings to their dark gods."

Gort looked at him. "How ya know dat?"

"I've seen it before." The Techmarine cocked his bolter and moved to the side. "I'll check the perimeter."

'I'll check the perimeter!' Jax silently mocked. He looked across the resort. "So where do you think the princess is?"

"Daughter of a High Lord, Jax," Dimitri corrected.

Jax shrugged. "Don't make no difference what she is. Gotta get her back regardless."

"How 'bout dat tower?" Gort said, pointing at a particular spire, "Look's bigga den da rest. Prolly da place fer da boss o' deez 'ere Chaos boyz."

"Makes sense to me," Jax said. "Whadda ya think, Dimitri?"

A blue blast of plasma smashed into the ground next to Jax, sending a splash of molten stone up across his chest. Everyone spun around and looked up along the shot's trajectory. Perched atop the stone roof was a trio of tau battlesuits, their tan shells glowing in the light of the city-wide fire.

"Imperial interlopers, state your purpose here," the middle one called out through external vox-coders. The voice was very human, and spoke perfect Imperial. "Do not make us fire on you."

Tau infantry emerged from the building's innards, a collection of fire warriors and human auxiliaries. All were armed and aiming at the two humans and ork on the balcony. Red targeting dots appeared across Jax and Dimitri from the tau weapons, making it clear who would come out on top if the situation turned hot.

Quickly, he activated his comm. "Jax, I think we had best play along."

"Yeah, I agree," came the reply. "These boys look like they mean business."

"I'z goin' in!" Gort bellowed, "WAA—"

Jax grabbed the flash git and slammed him headfirst into the stone railing with enough force to kill a man.

"We're here to rescue Marie Vilverin," Dimitri stated clearly, "We have no quarrel with your empire."

Jax laid the unconscious Gort on the ground and looked up at the battlesuits. "Yeah, so stay out of our goddamn way!"

The lead battlesuit didn't speak for a moment. "Wait, Jax?"

The Confederate stood up and squared off with the commander. "Yeah. Who wants to know?"

With a flare of its jetpack the crisis suit descended to the balcony, landing with enough force to dent the stone. It knelt till the chest nearly touched the floor and the pilot canopy retracted, revealing a human in a jumpsuit.

Jax started forward, peeling back his visor. "Gabe? Gabe Kahn?"

"Hey, Jax."

The Confederate's inevitable crushing bear hug came next, leaving Dimitri deeply confused. Behind the embracing men, the tau soldiers dropped their aim, sharing confused looks.

How was it that Jax knew a human defector? Was this a mistake, or was this Kahn another shadow worlder? And if the latter was the case, why the hell was he here? For that matter, what was with the tau presence anyway?

Dimitri sighed. This mission had just become much stranger.

**Author's Note: So, I do have a couple of things to talk about here.**

**Firstly, I am eternally grateful for the fact that the story's broken 100 reviews. It shows newcomers how much fun they'll have upon reading, and I thank you for that. But hey now, that doesn't mean stop. If you have an opinion, shout! If you like what you're seeing, shout! And if you don't, shout louder so I can stop the problem before it progresses.**

**Secondly, I have two friends who have recently started writing for this site. They don't have a lot of readers and they wanted me to sort of advertise for them. Yeah, because I'm such a bigshot...**

**So here it goes: The first one's pen name is LoneWanderer204 and he writes (surprise, surprise) Fallout fiction. He's got one really funny one-shot published and is beginning a multi-chapter adventure romp. He's pretty new at writing but doesn't suck by any means, so if you're into Fallout, check him out.**

**The other one is named Machine Man. He's a great writer. The man has a Master's degree in English Literature, and he's writing possibly the most genius story ever. It's a story based on Superman, narrated by the Man of Steel himself. Go to his profile and check it out. If you like Superman or Batman at all, you'll love it.**

**So that's my one and only ad section. Hope you liked it.**

**Until next weekend, adieu.  
**


	15. Chapter 15: Space Fight, Catching Up

_Sandalphon _was angry. He was angry all the time. Being angry was one of the crucial tenants of being a sub-daemon of Khorne. So was being violent, but _Sandalphon _had learned long ago that the two typically went hand in hand. When he was a bloodletter, for instance, his anger had made his hellblade swing faster.

Of course, now he was no mere bloodletter. He was a much more powerful daemon incorporeally bonded to a corrupt strike cruiser. So now when he increased his anger, the ship's engines moved faster, its gundecks loaded quicker, and its lances struck with more power.

So when he hit _Hammer's Fall_ about a quarter of the way up its starboard flank, sliced through prow-first, and felt the gore of countless crewmen splash across his hardened steel body, he was pissed off. He knew he could have hit higher up and cleaved the stupid Imperial ship in two.

With a psychic roar that drove his few sane crewmembers out of their minds, _Sandalphon_ pulled a rolling turn on his engines and opened fire with his lances. The twin red beams stitched canyon-deep gouges in the side of the Imperial vessel, canyons that bloomed with the explosive decompression of contained atmosphere and sent the _Hammer's Fall _rolling into the debris field.

Seeing the prey making yet another move to escape angered _Sandalphon_. By Khorne, he had torn the greatest of ships apart, from loyalist twins of his to mighty _Emperor_-class battleships. This cruiser was a speck by comparison, and he would drink the souls of those aboard for the glory of the Blood God!

With renewed vigor, _Sandalphon _made another attack run, this one preceded by the full complement of his forward batteries' ammunition stores.

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 15: Space Fight Interlude/Catching Up_

* * *

Morahame, Resort Primaris

* * *

Jax laughed. "God damn, Kahn. How you been?"

"Good, Jax," replied the man in the crisis suit, "Well, I'm pretty sure I was dead there for a while, and up until this point, I was convinced this was all a near-death hallucination. That wasn't so much fun. But now that you're here, I feel marginally less insane."

"Great to see ya," Jax said, then hugged him again.

"Yeah, you too," Kahn replied, "Strange as that may be."

"We gotta talk about old times," Jax said with a grin. "Remember that time in the med bay—"

"Woah, hold on a moment," Dimitri said. He stepped between the two men, using his two tons of red neo-steel as a block. "Before the two of you get to reminiscing, could someone tell me what the hell is going on here?"

"Seriously," muttered one of the human auxiliaries.

Kahn turned his crisis suit around so as to better glare at his subordinate. "Patrol, now."

The fire warriors and gue'vesa filed out in a standard spread formation, filling in firing points at windows and down the broad stairwells that honeycombed the spire at their rear.

As they got to it, Kahn turned back. "Anyway, you were saying something about explanations?"

Dimitri nodded. "I believe I'm entitled to them, as is Jax. Trusting as he is, I am not."

Jax started to protest, but Kahn waved him to stop. "No, no, Jax. I'll answer him." Kahn looked up at Dimitri and their eyes locked. Something about the man's stare worried Dimitri; like looking at a shark.

"I bother you," came the creepy words to go with the creepy look, "Something about me doesn't sit right with you."

"Yes."

"Well, Dimitri, that's because I'm a telepath."

Dimitri opened his mouth for proof, but then realized that he hadn't been introduced to Kahn by name yet. That sort of did it for him.

Jax grinned and nudged Kahn in the side. "And you're damn good at it, too."

"You've got questions, so I'll answer them. Yes, I'm from your shadow world. No, I am not an evil person. No, I harbor no thoughts of killing Jax. Oh, and your subconscious says you had eggs for breakfast, so yahoo. Mystery solved."

Dimitri paused, processed all of that, got over the inherent 'what the hell' factor, and nodded. "Okay, so what is the Tau Empire doing here?"

"Rescue mission, same as you," Kahn replied, "One of our Ethereals was here on business. He and his retinue have most likely been captured by the leader of this warband."

"So," Jax said, "Team up?"

"Team up," Kahn agreed.

From the inner tower came the abrupt bangs of bolter fire, followed by the snap-pew of massed pulse rifles. Kahn spun around and shouted something in tau to the crisis suits above, sending them jetting for the opposite side of the structure.

"We've got contacts," Kahn told Jax, "Inner spire, moving up. Looks to be our hosts. Care to help?"

"Damn right I do!" The Confederate hefted his Impaler and moved into the building proper. "Dimitri, get Gort up and find Castarius. Make sure they don't shoot our new pals."

"I sincerely hope you aren't planning on making friends with the traitors, too."

Jax found the closest interior stairwell, leaned over it, and squeezed off a long burst. A cry of pain issued from something below. "Nope."

* * *

_Hammer's Fall_, Bridge

* * *

Servitors scurried across the deck, specialized hose-limbs spewing oxygen-sucking fumes on the numerous electrical fires that had sprung up in the pits. Reports from throughout the ship indicated critical-strength riots on the decks near where the lances had struck. All told, nearly forty percent of the ship's weapons decks were inoperative, either through void exposure, rioting, or complete destruction.

"Higgins!" Brigham shouted, "Engine status!"

His senior officer marched across the bridge, ignoring the bleeding half of his face, and pulled the engine relay officer from the man's pit. "Captain needs the engine status!"

"Half operational capacity!" replied the junior officer. "Riots and weapons fire have taken out the rest."

Higgins dropped the man and reported the information back to Brigham. "Now what, lord?"

The distant clang of incoming fire against the hull echoed to the bridge. Crewmen stumbled and fell from the resulting shockwave. Higgins grabbed an overhead beam to steady himself, while Brigham barely moved in his throne. A host of new alarm klaxons began to wail.

An auspex officer stood up, shouted, "Incoming on starboard flank! The servants of the Dark Gods come again! Repent with me, my brothers!"

Higgins drew his service pistol and shot the man in the chest. He looked back up at Brigham. "Lord?"

The old captain leaned forward on his throne. His ship had been through worse than this. The 13th Black Crusade, the 3rd War for Armageddon, the Hellsing Rebellion. Traitor Astartes or not, there was no chance that a one-on-one fight would see the end of the _Hammer's Fall_.

"Here's what we'll do…"

* * *

_Sandalphon_ was almost there, the Imperial vessel growing nearer with every second. He could already taste the victory to come, the feel of the enemy armor breaking across his prow, the psychic blaring of dying crewmen. He could use his lances again and just cut the thing in half, but that would be wrong. To kill the foe up close was more satisfying.

What wasn't satisfying was the moment where the prey's engines flared and sent it flipping above him, inverted to bring its untouched dorsal cannon arrays to bear on his exposed spine.

For the briefest of moments, the _Hammer's Fall_ and _Sandalphon_ were linked by a fusillade of shells, lasers, missiles and atomic charges that filled the two kilometers of void between the vessels.

_Sandalphon _felt his hull breach, felt internal supports snap like twigs under the barrage, and rolled away from the attack. He spun into the debris from his previous kills and returned fire, spraying shot after shot from his remaining cannons after the offending Imperials.

But the _Hammer's Fall _was already too distant, pulling around onto the opposite side of the planet in a low orbital path, and his shots merely fell into the atmosphere, ineffective.

_Sandalphon_ realized that neither he nor his opponent was capable of continuing the fight in their current states and let out a howl of rage, unheard beyond his own scarred hull.

* * *

Brigham sat back in his throne. "There, I think we made our point."

The bridge was in chaos. Although the fires had been put out, the rest of the ship below the command decks was still in the midst of a hive-riot. Security teams were being dispatched to the hotter parts of the unrest and decks too unruly for conventional tactics were being vented to space.

"Ship is stabilizing, Captain," Higgins reported. "Repair crews are assembling for external repairs."

"Let them get to it when we've reached the light side of the planet," Brigham ordered, signaling his liquor vaults to rise, "And send word to the ground team. Make sure they know of our situation."

"Aye, Captain."

"And Higgins?"

"Lord?"

"Damn fine work." Brigham retrieved a bottle from one of the racks around him and tossed it.

Higgins caught the offered drink and held the frosty glass to his wounded temple. "Thank you, lord. Your plan was brilliant."

Brigham waved the nicety aside and Higgins went back to work, organizing repair crews and setting vox messages to be sent. On the forward occulus screen, the _Hammer's Fall _passed the twilight band and into the light of the system's sun.

* * *

Morahame, Surface

* * *

The Traitor Marine came at Dimitri, chainsword held high and screaming something about blood. When the downward swipe came Dimitri leapt back, avoiding the screaming blade's tip by mere inches. He reacted on instinct and the Impaler in his grasp roared spikes into the corrupted Astartes, punching through the tortured battleplate and grinding the once-human's organs into paste.

As the heavy corpse hit the stone floor, Dimitri paused, amazed that he had just done by himself what it would have taken his entire platoon to do in the Guard. The power of the armor he wore was intoxicating.

"Dimitri!"

Jax hit him from the side and the two landed behind a pillar just as a hail of bolts lit up the air behind them. A squad of fire warriors, caught in the open, was ripped to shreds in the thundering barrage. Xenos blood tagged the walls.

Dimitri rolled over and looked up at Jax. "Thanks."

"Shut up and get yer fucking head in the game!" Jax shouted. The Confederate stood and opened fire, forcing the traitors into cover.

Gort ran up and aimed his snazzgun. A jagged ray of blue lightning lashed out from one of the weapon's barrels and vaporized a hostile.

All across the spire, tau and Chaos forces traded fire, tearing through ballrooms, libraries, dining halls, and bedrooms. The sounds of bolter fire rocked the hall they were in as the Traitor Astartes slowly advanced from marble pillar to marble pillar, careful to keep laying down covering fire.

"They'll reach us," Dimitri observed. He saw a bit of exposed armor, black with gold trim, and took a shot. The spike missed, careening down the corridor and into the darkness.

"No they won't," Jax replied.

The Confederate stood and fired rocket after rocket, each one breaking the base of a pillar. Four of the immense cylinders fell to the floor and shattered, leaving white chunks of debris in their wake.

One of the piles moved and a Traitor Marine started to pull free of the mess. Dimitri put three in the bastard's helmet and the struggling stopped.

The squad's sergeant belted an order in another language and the traitors fell back, firing, to the stairwell.

"That's right!" Jax shouted, "Run fuckers!"

Gort fired again and turned one of the fleeing enemies to dust. "Right den! Git outta 'ere ya wimpy grots!"

Jax opened a community link that appeared Dimitri's HUD. "Kahn, we're clear on this side."

"Understood," replied the Shas'o, an 'unknown' appearing in place of his picture, "My people have the opposite flank secured. I'll meet you on the balcony."

"Gotcha," Jax replied and closed the link. He looked over at Gort and Castarius. "Me and Dimitri're gonna go talk tactics with Kahn. Stick around hereabouts and make sure those bastards don't grow the balls to hit back."

"On it, Boss."

"Right away."

As the ork and Techmarine got into position, Dimitri followed Jax down the hall.

"This is incredible," he said.

"What's that?"

"The power this armor gives me," Dimitri replied. He tried to keep the smile from coming through in his voice, but failed. "It's amazing, like I can take on the world."

Jax shrugged. "Well, ya can. But don't let it go to yer head."

"Yes. Of course."

When they reached the balcony, Kahn's crisis suit was resting to one side. He stood at the railing looking toward the largest relaxation spire on the island, flanked by his two bodyguard crisis suits, both of whom were staring at Jax and Dimitri as they approached.

Jax stepped up next to Kahn. "I'm thinking yer pals don't like us much."

"They'll get over it," came the answer. Kahn pointed at the spire in the distance. "That's our goal, the place where they're holding your Marie Xanithos and our Ethereal."

Dimitri looked at him. "You speak as if you know for certain."

Kahn held a finger to his temple. "I do."

"Okay, we know where to go. So how ya conjure we're supposed to get there?" Jax asked. "Can't exactly walk through this fire, and we ain't got them jump jets like y'all."

"We've got that covered," Kahn said. He climbed back into his crisis suit, thumbed a switch, and spoke into a mic. He listened to the reply and, apparently satisfied, looked back at Jax. "Ever seen a Manta?"

"Nope. What's that?"

In answer to his question came the roaring of jet intakes, propelling a gigantic gunship into view from below the balcony. It rotated in front of them, showing off a bulbous hull the size of a titan. To Dimitri, the craft looked like it would be more at home beneath the waves than in the air. A ramp descended to the balcony and beckoned them aboard.

"Hell yeah!" Jax said, running up without another thought.

Dimitri sighed and clicked on his comm. "Gort, Castarius, we're moving in on the objective. Come to the balcony."

"Roger that, Guardsman," came the Techmarine's reply, "We're on our way."

Dimitri switched it off and looked over at Kahn.

The human Shas'o gave him a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Dimitri. We'll get there in time."

* * *

Primary Relaxation Spire

* * *

Adamus grabbed Marie by the hair and pulled her face back from the carpet. Her pupils were dilated and a blood vessel had burst in her right eye. Part of her skull was cracked, probably causing cerebral hemorrhaging and a harsh concussion. Her jaw fell open, letting a cascade of red pour out from where she'd bitten off part of her tongue.

Dropping her with disgust, Adamus activated his vox bead. "Omnios, get up here. My prisoner is dead."

**Author's Note: Before you say anything, I know it was short. Only 2,602 words. But at least I got it out on time, right?**

**I haven't had a lot of time for anything this past week. School's been gobbling up all my attention, so writing time has taken a hit. That's also why I haven't been able to respond to many reviews. If I didn't thank you with a PM, sorry. I feel that doing so is important and I'll try and do better in the future.  
**

**The good news is that I'm free for the rest of the month, so I'll have unlimited time to write. Another chapter will be up next week as planned, and the week after that, and the week after that...**

**As always, please review. **

**Later.  
**


	16. Chapter 16: Smash and Grab

The Manta missile destroyer moved with speed that belied its bulk, cruising through the burning resort with ease. It dodged buildings with graceful swoops of its wings and loped above and below air bridges without pause. The fires licked at its underbelly, a symptom of how close it was to the deck, staying low to avoid taking enemy fire. Kahn and his two bodyguards kept pace with the ship, skirting along the edges of its flight path on jets of blue.

Inside the ship's troop deck, Jax and Dimitri's party stood holding onto overhead piping, denied the luxury of grav couches by virtue of their size. Unfortunately, being at the center made it all the easier for the assembled fire warriors and gue'vesa to glare at them.

Now that Dimitri thought about it, maybe he was the only one feeling uncomfortable. Gort didn't seem to care, while Castarius glared right back at the xenos, using his Astartes countenance to put the fear of the God-Emperor into them. Jax had his visor down, so Dimitri couldn't get a read on him.

"Jax?" he asked over the comm.

"Know what?" came the reply, "I don't think I much like the tau. They keep staring at us."

Dimitri smiled. "You too?"

"Yup. Say, Dimitri, whatcha think of Kahn?"

"I didn't think that mattered," Dimitri replied. "After all, the two of you seem like you're good friends."

Jax grunted like he did when something made him unhappy. "People change, Dimitri. I got no idea if Kahn's the same guy he used to be."

Dimitri sighed. "Look, Jax—"

"Just call it like ya see it. Ain't nothing you can say'll hurt my feelings. I'm a big boy."

"In that case, I don't care for the man. A psyker is a bad omen, Jax. We would do well to steer clear of him."

"Psyker?" Jax asked. "You mean like a telepath?"

"Yes."

At that, the Confederate laughed. "Come on, Dimitri. That ain't no reason to not like someone. It's just a reason not to play poker with him."

Gort moved, catching Dimitri's attention. The ork shifted to look at one of the fire warriors sitting along the wall. The tau in question was older, probably a sergeant, and went bareheaded. He was glaring at Gort.

"Wha?" asked the ork, "Youse got a problem wit us bein' 'ere, Grayskin?"

The fire warrior showed no reaction to the question.

"Well, come on, den!" Gort shouted. "Let's 'ave it, shooty boy!"

Still no reaction from the tau.

Dimitri slid his visor back. "Give it up, Gort. He doesn't even understand what you're saying."

Gort's hand dropped to the stubgun strapped to his thigh and pulled it free. "I bet he unnersands dis!"

Suddenly, Jax's flak pistol was out, the muzzle pressed into Gort's temple. "Quit it."

Reluctantly, Gort re-holstered his sidearm. "Ain't got ta shoot anyfing much since we set down on dis 'ere rock 'cept a coupla Chaos boyz," the flash git grumbled, sitting down on the deck, "Dis 'ere's a disappointin' Waaagh!, dat's fer sure."

"Don't care." Jax spun his weapon back into place. "Just keep yer head on straight and shoot when I tell ya. Got it?"

"Yah, Boss."

Across the way, Castarius chuckled. The sound of it disturbed Dimitri.

* * *

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 16: Smash and Grab_

* * *

_Hammer's Fall_, Bridge

* * *

"Define inoperative."

"Inoperative, sir." The teleporter executive officer stared at Higgins with anger in his gaze. Obviously, having his machine malfunction was not something the man was used to. "It means that it will not work."

Higgins sighed. "How long do you need to repair it?"

"It. Will. Not. Work," the officer said through gritted teeth. "There is no repairing it, sir."

Without another word, Higgins shut off the screen. Throne, but this was getting complicated.

"Lord Captain," he said, turning to face the raised command throne, "The teleporter is broken."

Brigham looked up from the decking. "How?"

"Electronic backlash from the battle damage, lord. I've been informed it will need a full replacement."

Brigham sighed and gazed at the forward occulus screen. From the day side, the suffering on Morahame was clear. A string of blackened resort islands stretched across the world's equator, marking the places where the traitors had already made sacrifices to their foul gods. It was sickening.

"So now how do we get the men back?"

* * *

Morahame, Surface

* * *

La'non flew alongside the Manta on his Crisis suit's jetpack. He scanned the readouts of his battlesuit's cockpit without thought, checking and rechecking thruster output and stabilizers from reflex. He looked across the sloping hull of the missile destroyer at Feg'at. With a touch to the comm. pad, he opened a channel to his fellow Shas'el.

"What is it?" came Feg'at's voice. His words were quick, choppy; he was troubled as well.

"The Shas'o," La'non replied, glancing up at the command suit where it cruised on point, "Something is wrong. How does he know these Imperials?"

"I don't know," Feg'at sighed, "But K'han has never steered us wrong before. Have faith, La'non."

La'non was quiet. Ahead, the tower drew near.

* * *

Adamus stood to the side as Omnios went to work. The Thousand Sons sorcerer bent over the dead form of Marie Xanitos, holding his staff for support, and looked into her face. From the hollow depths of his empty helmet came a low moan, the sound of wind across a desolate wasteland. Twin tendrils of blue light snaked from his blank eye sockets and connected with Marie's face, wreathing her head like the hands of a lover.

Abruptly, the beams dove into her open mouth, filling her with a brilliant internal light. She bucked, gasped, and coughed to life, quaking from the shock of having a concentration of the warp jumpstart her soul. She screamed.

Omnios stood and walked past Adamus with no acknowledgement save a nod.

Adamus watched the incorporeally possessed suit of armor go and felt yet again the unease that seemed to trail the followers of Tzeentch. He appreciated the sorcerer's powers, but sometimes the Son of Magnus was more trouble than he was worth.

Shaking the thoughts away, Adamus turned back to Marie, who was still wracked by spasms. "Welcome back, lady."

She tried to respond, but what came out was nowhere near coherent. The pain she was feeling was clearly exquisite.

"So, shall we continue?" Adamus asked, hauling her off the ground by the hair.

Behind him, the double doors to the library opened. Drake marched in with his personal raptor squad, helm removed and mouth caked with dried blood. Clearly, the former Blood Angel had been delving into the backlogged sacrifices.

"Drake," Adamus said, bothered by the interruption.

Drake inclined his head. "War Captain, the Imperials and tau are here."

"I know," Adamus replied, "The tau crash landed, and the Imperial ship is being dealt with in orbit. We've been over this."

"No, Adamus," Drake said, grabbing his shoulder. "They're _here_."

At that moment, an explosion wracked the spire, shaking what paintings that had survived the initial attack off the walls. Adamus dropped Marie and drew Zeruel, the daemonic weapon writhing with joyful energy at the prospect of killing.

"That came from above," he said. "Get your men up to the roof. Kill them."

"Yes, War Captain."

"And Drake, if you botch this, I'll find ways of hurting you more than you can imagine."

The corrupted Sanguinary Guard bared his fangs. "I won't. You can be sure of that."

As the raptors retreated from the chamber, Adamus stalked across to the chandelier and pulled the Ethereal from his mount. He tossed the tau leader onto the carpet alongside Marie and faced the door, sword and bolter ready.

If the enemy wanted his prisoners, then he would be waiting for them.

* * *

The Manta lived up to its name and saturated the landing zone with missiles, blasting the manicured gardens and pools that occupied the spire's roof with chain reactions of plasma-based warheads. Cultists, positioned on lookout detail, burned in the blue flames, their screams reaching into the sealed troop bay.

The rear ramp pulled away and Jax ran for the rear. "Here we go!"

The Confederate jumped from the Manta, dropping out of sight. Castarius followed him without pause, but Dimitri was hesitant. He walked to the edge and looked down, unsure if he could take the fall.

Gort decided for him, and with a boot to the back the former Guardsman was heading down.

He fell the full thirty feet and landed upright, his boots sinking into the turf. No sooner had he landed than gunfire erupted from the bushes around them; the cultists were returning fire. Jax stood and let rip, the spikes tearing into the cultists' cover with devastating effect, dropping a score of men and sending the remainder scurrying for cover.

The teams of fire warriors and human auxiliaries rappelled down on assault wire and spread out across the gardens, engaging in ranged combat with the cultists. The clean hiss-snap of tau weaponry mixed with the rougher reports of stubguns as the gardens became a battleground.

The three Crisis suits landed in the middle of the area. Kahn's suit whipped around and kicked a cultist through a fountain, then spun and unleashed a torrent of fire from a multi-barreled weapon on his shoulder, tearing a mob of soldiers apart. His bodyguards covered his flanks, keeping the enemy pinned while their commander delivered the killing blow.

Thanks to his armor's comm. system, Dimitri could hear Kahn giving orders to his cadre. He couldn't make sense of them, but the calm tone with which they were delivered surprised him. The fire warriors responded to his words immediately, their calm echoing that of their leader.

"Jax," Kahn said in Imperial, "We've got the area secured. Move into the spire. My teams will follow you down."

"On it," Jax replied. He turned to Dimitri, Gort and Castarius. "C'mon!"

They moved out across the gardens at a jog, Jax leading them around the edge of a pool. Dimitri kept pace, scanning for targets. His HUD's proximity alert sounded and he spun to his left, identifying a group of cultists on the opposite shore.

"Targets!" he shouted, bringing his weapon around. The Impaler made short work of them, cutting them down at chest-level and sending them toppling into the water in red splashes.

Jax looked back at him. "Well, looks like ya done took care of it."

"I'll say," Dimitri muttered, looking at the weapon in his hands.

They passed the pool and moved into an orchard. The trees were blackened, having burned long before tonight. Dimitri took a closer look at one of the trees as he passed it, realized that the twisted protrusions from the bark were human, and recoiled as he heard one of them moan.

"Chaos bastards."

Jax leaned to one of the trees. "What? I don't see what the big--Agh! Fucking gross!"

A wail of jump packs split the air. Dimitri yanked his head skyward just in time to see the raptors descend, chainswords roaring, into their midst.

* * *

Drake landed right in front of the Techmarine and raised his power sword. The blade encarmine, once one of the haloed relics of the Blood Angels, crackled as it came down toward the enemy's throat, ready to sever the head from the neck in one fluid motion.

The Techmarine was quick, though, and caught the blade in the grip of his servo-claw. The mechanicus designed limb wrested the blade to the wayside and the Techmarine punched Drake in the face.

The former Blood Angel hissed and pulled his blade away, peppering his target with his wrist-mounted boltgun, shattering the ceramite surface of the Techmarine's chest. The loyalist weasel fell back behind a tree, giving him a moment's respite, but Drake knew it wouldn't last. His shots had wounded the Techmarine. He could smell the blood.

Mouth split in a feral grin, he charged.

* * *

The first raptor landed in front of Dimitri and shot him with a bolt pistol. The shot wasn't particularly well aimed, managing only to blast a piece out of his right shoulder pad. The chainsword came next, slashing down to cleave him in half, but it never got there.

Jax appeared behind the raptor, wrapped his arm around its helmet, and broke the Chaos jump trooper's neck with a tug of his forearm. As the body fell, Jax snatched up its chainsword and, brandishing the new weapon like a familiar tool, spun to deflect another of the demented warriors.

As Dimitri watched, Jax grappled with the raptor, toe-to-toe, chainsword-to-chainsword. Neither fighter was particularly concerned with finesse, as evidenced by their banter.

"The War Captain will eat your soul!"

"Fuck you, fuckhead!"

With those words, Jax kicked his opponent in the gut, spun his freed sword around, and lopped the bastard's head off.

The corpse fell but Jax was already moving on, Impaler in one hand, chainsword in the other. "Come on, ya sons of bitches! Let's rock!"

On cue, a wailing noise blared from Jax's speakers, then soon resolved into one of the Confederate's brutal examples of rock and roll.

Standing, Dimitri followed Jax into the melee, supporting with cover fire where he could and gawking in astonishment where he couldn't. The Confederate fought in a way Dimitri had never seen, holding his chainsword with the same hand that held the foregrip of his rifle, swinging and shooting targets so that the damage became muddled, impossible to tell one cause of death from another.

A raptor fell with no arms, another died from decapitation, while yet another flew off the side of the spire when his jump pack exploded. Jax broke legs, snapped spines, and ground organs, pushing through the opposition like the maglev cargo tram he was, ignoring the bolts that hammered his shell.

After a solid minute of fighting, the last raptor took off in retreat, firing back as he went. Jax lowered his chainsword and aimed with both hands, drawing down on the target with calm. The rifle's underslung launcher flashed and a rocket spiraled up to meet the raptor, engulfing it in a promethium explosion.

* * *

Gort landed next to Castarius. "'Ey, Beaky, whatcha hidin' fer?"

Castarius didn't reply, instead busy checking the wounds in his chest. Once satisfied that his Astartes metabolism was clogging the holes, he readied his bolter.

"Ya get shot, Beaky?" Gort asked. He peeked out from behind the statue at Drake. "By dat grot? Heh, I'z gonna take care o' dis fer ya."

Before Castarius could stop him, Gort stood up and let rip with all five barrels of his snazzgun. A beam of energy, bolt of lightning, hail of bullets at varying calibers and at least one rocket connected with Drake. The raptor sergeant stumbled forward and thudded to the grass with a wet slap, guts spilling from the broken shards of his blackened armor. The sculpted wings on his back, all that remained of his time as a Sanguinary Guard, broke under the sustained fire.

"Dere, all dun." Gort grinned at Castarius. "How's dat fer being dead killy?"

The Techmarine looked at the smoking corpse, and then back to the flash git. "Ork, it seems I have misjudged you."

Gort picked his nose. "Wut?"

"Come on!" Jax shouted, "Found an entrance over here!"

* * *

For the next hour, Dimitri, Jax, Gort and Castarius moved through the upper spire, down dark corridors and through wrecked chambers. The sounds of fighting echoed around them as the tau pushed further down in other areas; in the further background, the constant screaming outside could be heard.

Enemy contact was rare, and aside from the occasional cultist, not much was stirring in the ruined spire.

Kahn linked up with them after a while, an honor guard of fire warriors with him. The other shadow worlder was dressed in tau infantry armor, his bulky Crisis suit left above with the Manta and his bodyguards. His weapon, a rifle of decidedly non-tau design, was held across his chest.

"C10?" Jax asked.

Kahn nodded. "Yeah. A chainsword?"

"Yup." The Confederate swung the blade. "Whadda ya think?"

"Brutal, messy, and unsubtle. It fits you."

They moved on in conjunction with the aliens, spread formation. Kahn led them, taking turns at random, seemingly wandering the corridors with no real reason for the course changes. Eventually, Dimitri realized why.

"Witchsight," he muttered. "Damn psyker."

The group reached an arched doorway that led into a hall, long and wide, with balconies overlooking it. Kahn called them to a stop and looked down the hall, checking from side to side.

Impatient, Dimitri moved up alongside the shadow worlder. "What is it?"

"There," Kahn said, gesturing up and to the right.

Dimitri followed his pointing finger, his suit isolating faint lines in the darkness and highlighting the forms above in green. Warriors in bulky armor moved on the ledges above, hefting heavy weapons into place. "Damn," Dimitri hissed.

Jax arrived behind them, crouched low. "Ambush?"

"Yes," Dimitri replied. "Traitor Marines on the balconies. We should look for another way around."

"Can't," Kahn said. "The people we've come here to save, yours and mine, are just down this hall."

"Your witchsight tell you that, mutant?"

"Dimitri!" Jax punched him in the shoulder. "Be nice!"

Dimitri ignored him. It was high time this psyker learned exactly what was what.

Unfortunately, Kahn didn't rise to the bait, and instead continued discussing their current predicament. "Way I see it, if you move out first and take the opening hits, my fire warriors can ID and pick off the hostiles. Sound good?"

Jax nodded. "Yeah. Gort, Castarius, front and center!"

"Yah Boss?"

"We're drawin' fire," Jax said, "When I give the word, you two start runnin' down the left side. Me and Dimitri'll take the right. Don't stop runnin' till everything's dead."

Castarius nodded, while Gort clapped his hands together in delight. "'Bout time we dun sumthin' like dis! Straight up orky o' ya, Boss."

Dimitri stared at the ork. "That's a reassuring thought."

Jax readied his rifle and chainsword and got ready. "Okay, go!"

Dimitri followed him out, charging down the right side like a bat out of hell. Gunfire, the flat bangs of heavy bolters, rang out behind them as the traitors opened up on the hall. Jax returned fire, hammering the side opposite them, while Gort did the same from his angle, lighting the hall in an array of crisscrossing flashes.

Dimitri didn't fire. He'd yet to get the strafing trick down and was too concentrated on running to have done so anyway. He could feel the rounds slamming home behind him, exploding against the floorboards. Splinters clattered against his back, but he ignored them, just working to put one foot in front of the other.

A bolt exploded against his thigh, sending him spinning into the wall and then to the floor. He lay there, looking up at the traitor above as it sighted on him with its bolter, and knew this was it.

There was a report, louder than any bolter, and the traitor's head detonated in a spray of red.

Seconds later, the doorway exploded in strobes of blue as the fire warriors opened fire, pulse rifles spitting their payloads into the balconies. The fire was precise and deadly, the hallmark of tau military doctrine, and scythed down the first gunners in split seconds. The remaining Chaos Marines tried to alter their fire, but fell before they could finish, armor perforated by the hypersonic impacts of the xenos weaponry.

In the wake of the firefight, Kahn led his men out of the doorway and into the hall, his rifle smoking.

Jax met him halfway in a hug. "That was damn good!"

"Thanks," Kahn replied, directing his fire warriors to the door at the end of the hall. "We'll lead into the next room. Our turn."

"Sounds good," Jax replied, letting Kahn move down to his men, "We'll wait here."

Dimitri hauled himself up and strode over to Jax. "You know, after leaving the Guard, I assumed that I was done being bait."

"Ah, whatever. Yer alive, right?"

"Yes, no thanks to this plan."

"Know what? I think you can be a real bitch sometimes."

"So you've said."

Jax started to respond, but was cut off as the door to the next chamber exploded. Smoke curled out from the destroyed passage, covering the fire warriors near the door. Something moved in the confusion, and a fire warrior let out a yelp as his body was cut in two.

Pulse fire lit the dark, and the dying started.

* * *

Adamus spun off the first dead tau, his blade trailing a spray of xenos blood, and laid into the next with a vertical swipe, cleaving the fire warrior in two from head to groin. A pulse blast hissed past his head and he ducked, avoiding the next array of shots, before bringing Zeruel into the offender's chest. The daemonic blade howled with joy as it split the alien armor, sucking the essence of the tau's life into it.

He pulled back and spun the blade, decapitating three more foes in one go, and slammed his fist into another. The punch caved in the fire warrior's helmet, breaking the alien's skull in a burst of brain matter.

The unit's leader, a bare-headed shas'ui, drew his bonding knife and lunged forward. Adamus cut the weak knife in half and swiftly ended the alien sergeant's life, cutting his torso in half diagonally.

The remaining tau turned to flee. Adamus mowed them down without mercy, his bolter chattering with each life it took.

As the smoke cleared, Adamus got his first look at the Imperials that had assaulted him: a Techmarine, two strangely armored figures, a human in tau armor, and an ork. Strange as that last one was, Adamus found himself grinning. This would be interesting.

The soldier in white, a head again taller than the rest, opened fire with his rifle. Adamus jerked to the right, avoiding the projectiles by scant inches, and brought up his own weapon. His return fire did little more than force the white soldier's companions into cover at the hall's periphery, while the large warrior itself ignored the impacts against his body.

Adamus glanced back at where the man's fire had landed. Spikes, still red hot, jutted from the wall.

"Well then," he said, letting his bolter fall on its strap and readying Zeruel, "Let's have it."

* * *

Jax and the Chaos lord met with the force of two storm fronts, the wham of armor meeting armor echoing throughout the hall. Jax's chainsword skipped off the Traitor's sword and suddenly he was on the defensive, blocking hit after hit as he backpedaled down the corridor.

The swordsmanship of the enemy was impressive, that was obvious, and it was a testament to his own bullheadedness that Jax was able to stand against the opponent, beating back thrust after thrust. Dimitri tried to get a shot, but realized he couldn't do so without hitting both Jax and the enemy, such was the speed at which they fought.

Jax came off a parry and wrenched his weapon around, cutting in from an odd angle and forcing his opponent to compensate. Now on poor footing, the Chaos lord jagged back and to the right, fighting in a tenacious defensive posture.

"Go!" Jax shouted. "I can't hold this fucker forever!"

Dimitri sprang down the hall, not even aware that everyone else was following him, and entered the room. His visor highlighted two bodies, one a lanky Ethereal, the other Marie Xanthius.

"Castarius, get in here!"

* * *

Adamus wasn't grinning anymore. He was fighting harder than he ever had in his life, forced to make up new postures just to keep on an even footing with the random nature of his opponent. The Astartes in white armor, for he could not be anything less, must have been lobotomized.

The man fought like he was in a pub brawl, holding his body square with the opponent and swinging as though he were cutting wood. It made absolutely no sense. Adamus had fought Space Wolves with more finesse than this.

The chainsword came around again, toward Adamus's shoulder pauldron, and he was forced to take the hit. The teeth bit into the ceramite and stopped, lodged in the layers of plating. The Imperial grunted, trying to free the blade, and Adamus took the initiative. Zeruel hissed up from the side, diving for the opponent's side.

The white warrior grabbed his wrist, halting the blade and locking both combatants together. Adamus wanted to reach up and punch his opponent, but the chainsword had disrupted his arm's fibre bundles, locking his free arm in place.

His opponent let go of the chainsword and punched him in the face, denting his helmet's breath grille. Adamus stumbled back, yanking Zeruel with him, and landed on the floor, dazed.

* * *

"I have her," Castarius said, holding Marie in both arms. "Ork, cover me."

Dimitri stood halfway to the door, ready to help Jax as soon as they got moving. "Kahn!"

"Ready." The tau commander stood, the Ethereal over his shoulder. "My people will meet us on the way up."

"Then get going," Dimitri said, already running back to Jax. As he drew near, Jax punched the Chaos lord in the face and knocked him across the hall.

The Confederate nodded to him. "Looks like we're about done here. Wanna help me finish this jackass?"

"Absolutely," Dimitri said, turning to the prone Traitor Marine. Behind him, the rest of the group headed away with the hostages. "It seems like this is the end for you, Chaos filth."

The wounded man laughed. "Not quite."

There was a flash of red light, accompanied by the crack of atmosphere parting, and suddenly there was a fourth combatant in the hall. Surrounded by the burning ozone smell of teleportation, the hulking form of the Obliterator turned from its master and looked at Dimitri and Jax, its face slagged as if hit by acid.

"Human," it rumbled. One of the creature's arms bubbled and reconfigured to accommodate the bulk of a double-barreled autocannon. The weapon's barrels cycled, and with a clack, filled with ammunition.

Dimitri gulped. "Run?"

"That's what I'm thinkin'."

* * *

Kahn handed the Ethereal to a shas'ui aboard the Manta and moved aside, letting Castarius and Gort board with their own rescued prisoner. He walked across to his waiting Crisis suit and clambered inside, strapping himself in with the top-down g-harness. He activated the battlesuit and stood it from the kneeling position, checking weapon charges as he went.

Feg'at opened a channel to him. "Is everything alright, Shas'o?"

"The Ethereal is dying," Kahn replied. "Other than that, yes."

"Are we departing, then?"

"No. We wait for the Imperials."

Just then, Jax and Dimitri ran out of a tertiary service building and onto the lawn, lit by the rising dawn. Jax stopped for a moment and emptied his Impaler's magazine back the way they'd come, letting Dimitri get ahead of him.

"Get airborne, now!" the former guardsman was shouting.

Kahn connected to Dimitri's comm. system. "What's wrong?"

"Obliterator!"

The service building's front exploded as the Obliterator powered into the gardens, its autocannon chugging out streams of explosive death. A fire warrior team, set up on perimeter watch, was torn apart.

"Hell," Kahn muttered, switching onto cadre-wide frequency, "All warriors, pull back to the Manta!"

Jax thundered past, pushing Dimitri into the gunship. The Confederate reloaded and let off another clip into the charging beast while his partner helped pull the retreating tau up.

"Feg'at, La'non, link fire with me." Kahn dropped a markerlight on the Obliterator and opened fire.

Plasma stitched across the gardens, driving the Obliterator into a crouch. The creature paused, taking the incoming on its massive back, and morphed his limb into a lascannon. It turned and let off a blast, linking for one brilliant instant its weapon to Feg'at's Crisis suit.

The battlesuit detonated in a flash of blue light and toppled to the ground.

Kahn swore, checked the status of the Manta loading, confirmed everyone was aboard, and gave the order. "All units, we are evacuating."

La'non's suit turned to him. "But what about—"

"He is dead," Kahn said. "Leave him."

"Yes, Shas'o."

The Manta roared into the morning air, just as a full company of Chaos Marines arrived from the inner spire, accompanied by hordes of cultists. Kahn let off another series of plasma rifle shots into the mass of enemies before taking off himself.

* * *

Adamus marched into the gardens, tugging the chainsword out of his shoulder. He tossed the blade to the side and stopped next to his Obliterator. "Tharok, what happened?"

"They got away, Master," rumbled the mutant, "But that one didn't."

Adamus looked at the destroyed Crisis suit where it was burning on the lawn. "I care not about that! Where are the Imperials? Where is the warrior in white?"

Tharok looked at him. "Gone."

"That's it? All you have for me is 'gone'?"

"Yes."

"Incredible." Adamus slapped the monster across its face. "Do you remember Sacaroth IV?"

"Yes, you saved me."

"Right, I did save you. Meaning that you owe me a life debt. So start repaying me, damnit!"

"Yes, master."

At that, Adamus let out an incoherent roar and put his fist through a cultist's chest. The mortal quaked and died on his gauntlet, and Adamus threw it to a pack of its fellows to be devoured.

"Where is Drake? This is much his fault as it is yours."

"Dead."

Adamus turned. "Dead?"

"Dead." Tharok gestured to the charred remains of the raptor sergeant.

Adamus shook his head. "Get Omnios up here."

He looked into the distance, and in the weak light of dawn, the palls of smoke were dying around the resort city. The sacrifices were over, and somehow, that knowledge didn't comfort Adamus.

As of now, he had a new objective.

**Author's Note: This is the longest chapter I think the story has had so far, but it won't be for long. Now that the plot is starting to open up, giving me more possibilities, the chapters are going to get longer. However, this will not stall updates. Every weekend, I promise.  
**

**Other than that, nothing new to tell you other than thanks for your thoughts. Adios!  
**


	17. Chapter 17: Battle Saint

"Tau ship on an intercept course from the planet's surface."

Higgins heard the navigation officer and looked up to Brigham. "Orders, Captain?"

"Firing solutions," Brigham replied, "Forward guns. Burn those xenos from the skies."

Higgins relayed the order and watched as it traveled through the chain of officers and ensigns, was coded and sent down the pipe to the gun decks. The riots in the peasant decks were far from over, but it was testament to the ship's enforcer compliment that the order was passed as fast as it was. In just two minutes, every operational weapon on the prow was pointed at the rapidly growing tau vessel.

"Firing solutions locked," Higgins reported. "On your order, lord."

Just then, a voice burst through the back chatter of the bridge's vox-coders, resolving from a wash of static. "—not fire on us! Repeat, this is Trooper Dimitri Vlasna, calling from the incoming tau vessel! We have the package and are en route! Do not fire on us!"

Anticipating the coming order, Higgins called off all weapons and ordered the ship to dock. After he was finished, he looked up at Brigham.

The old captain looked disappointed.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 17: Battle Saint_

"You boys need a ride?" Jax asked, turning just inside the _Hammer's Fall_ airlock.

Kahn shook his head. "No. This craft is ether-capable. It isn't fast, but it'll get us home."

Castarius and Gort squeezed past, the former cradling the broken form of Marie Xanthius, the other his multitude of weapons. Dimitri came out last, Impaler slung, and stood alongside Jax.

"Well, good luck, Gabe," Jax said, holding out his hand, "Damn good seeing you again."

"You too, Jax."

The two men shook and parted, Kahn back into the Manta, Jax further into the ship at his back. The airlock sealed, followed by the dull thump of the ships detaching from each other. Dimitri walked over to a nearby view port and watched the gunship drift away on its ion engines.

Jax met him there. "Whadda ya think?"

Dimitri didn't say anything for a moment. "We had best see to the heiress," he finally said, "And then lay in a course for Terra."

"Yeah, I bet she'll be pretty happy 'bout us savin' her."

One Week Later

"Do not address me in such a way, cretin!"

The plate soared across the infirmary and broke against Dimitri's flak armor, spraying him with hot soup. With exaggerated calm, he wiped the noodles and broth from his face and looked at the girl sitting up on her bed.

"I just asked if you wanted food," he said.

She scoffed. "Yes, without addressing me properly! Besides, you failed to even _mention_ the _atrocious_ quality of what you void-born lowlifes call food."

Dimitri sighed. "Lady Marie, would your perfectness care to delve into the fairly degrading act of sampling our humble delicacies. We realize that the quality of our food is not up to your noble standards, but perhaps you would see it necessary to eat what we have prepared in the interest of maintaining your exquisite form."

"Very well, peasant. I shall eat your food."

_Gee, let me just scrape it up from the floor._ Dimitri turned to the door. "Give me just one moment, fair lady. Servitor!"

The man-drone moved in, carrying two additional platters of soup and bread. The ship's chief medicae had recommended Marie not eat many solids directly after her surgery, considering how part of her tongue had been synthetically re-grown and her stomach had yet to fully heal.

The casts on her elbows and knees were new, Dimitri noted, and probably due to her remarkable capacity to ignore advice and try to get up and leave the infirmary. This wasn't the first time in the past week she'd broken a bone.

The plates were set on mechanical arms and lowered to the perfect height for the bed-ridden heiress to eat. As she took a sip from her tea, she shooed Dimitri with her free hand. "Be gone!"

Dimitri left without bowing and shut the door before she could yell at him for it.

Outside, Jax was waiting for him. The Confederate, as always, was in his armor and as such took up half the corridor.

"How's the bitch?"

Dimitri shrugged. "The same. She still refuses to refer to me as anything but 'peasant' and I want to kill her."

"She weren't worth saving."

"Agreed," Dimitri said, "I cannot see what the Imperium would be losing if we threw her out an airlock."

Jax laughed. "Nothing probably. But that might not help us much, ya know?"

They were on the thruway now, moving down the rows of passages that comprised the ship's command deck. In the week since they had entered the warp, everything had for the most part returned to normal on the _Hammer's Fall_.

The riots in the underdecks were pacified, thanks in large part to the arrival of Jax and the presence he cast throughout the vessel. As it turned out, the threat of an armed Imperial saint in power armor was enough to put most any rebellion down.

Repairs to the damage incurred in the fight with the strike cruiser _Sandalphon_ were underway, with at least eighty percent of the decks now back up to operational strength. Some of the ship's younger populous were being called into service on the guncrews where their parents had died, an action necessary to keep the vessel up to combat strength.

Thankfully, most of the command deck seemed hopeful and cheery, knowing both that the mission had been accomplished and that they had a possible saint amongst them. Officers saluted as they passed and bid them good day, greetings Jax was happy to return with a grin and a handshake.

Dimitri now realized just what Tripe had meant by the public needing saints. It gave people hope, and that was as powerful a weapon as any battleship.

"Oh, forgot to tell ya. Brigham says we'll be back on Earth in just another week. Guess them Navigators're straight getting with it."

"Jax," Dimitri said as they entered a sparser populated deck, "Do you think you're ready for this?"

"What? The saint thing?"

"Yes."

The Confederate shrugged where he leaned against the railing. "Sure. Way I see it, only reason I'm here is to fight. Can't see a better way to get in a fight then as one of yer saints, right?"

"I guess so."

"Oh, come on. What's eatin' ya, Dimitri?"

Dimitri double checked to make sure the corridor was clear, then leaned in. "Where the hell did you learn to fight with a sword?"

"Never did. Why ya ask?"

"Because I saw you fight with a chainsword!" Dimitri said. "You took on Chaos raptors with a weapon you'd never held before and won. How?"

"I dunno. It just made sense when I picked it up, was all."

"You just picked it up and understood it?"

"Yup."

Dimitri leaned back against his own railing and looked down the track. "Well, you're right about one thing, Jax. You were born to kill."

_Sandalphon_

Drake came to life coughing. At first, he coughed from the violence inherent in having his body jumpstarted by the energies of the warp. Then he coughed to dislodge the rejuvenating stasis clotting liquid from his esophagus. After that was through, he coughed because Adamus had his ceramite-clad fingers wrapped around the former Blood Angel's throat.

Through the stars bursting across his vision, all Drake could see was the face of his commander. He heard the War Captain cursing in the harsh Cthonic dialect the man was raised speaking, and though Drake knew the language, his grasp of it was amateur at best. Being throttled didn't help his understanding.

Adamus didn't care. In fact, he would have killed the weakling again if it weren't for Omnios. The Son of Magnus set a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back. He had not a prayer of pulling the angered Legionnaire off the prey, but the gesture spoke volumes. In understanding, Adamus released his stranglehold.

Drake slumped forward in the restraints that held him, gasping for air. Adamus waited impatiently, and was asking questions before his soldier could speak.

"How did they do it?"

"What?"

Adamus backhanded him, the force of the impact breaking bone. "How did they do it?" he bellowed.

Drake looked up at his commander. "I don't know, War Captain. We descended on them in perfect formation, they could not have survived…"

"And yet you're the one being revived while the rest of your squad lays dead." Adamus shook his head. "Overconfidence has always been your weakness. Well, overconfidence and extreme bloodlust."

Omnios gave a silent nod of agreement. Drake shot the sorcerer a glare before replying. "I am no Khornate berserker!"

"No, you're worse," Adamus replied. "At least berserkers are predictable. The blood in your veins prevents you from being even that." The War Captain spat on the deck. "Blood Angels." He made it sound like a curse.

Drake felt the blood rush to his head and was painfully aware of the acid spit gathering in his mouth. With effort, he pushed the haze out of his eyes and swallowed the spittle. "I have failed you, sir."

Adamus nodded, drumming his fingers on the hilt of Zeruel. "Glad you concur. Now then, get up. We've got work to do."

With that, the War Captain left the chamber and headed down the corridor. Omnios unlatched the restraints and Drake climbed down from the pedestal, wringing his wrists where the clamps had dug into his flesh. "Where is my wargear?"

The sorcerer pointed off to the right. Drake looked and saw his suit of Sanguinary guard armor tossed in the corner, his blade Encarmine stuck through one of the sculpted wings.

He sighed. "Thanks."

Omnios walked away, a low moan escaping his helmet that sounded faintly like a laugh.

_Hammer's Fall, _Arming Chambers

Castarius turned over the plate of neo-steel clamped in his servo arm and ran his ceramite-clad fingers across the surface. A mono-piece slid down over his right eye and he examined the plate closer, magnifying it to seventeen times the norm. At that level he could see the individual folds in the armor, the bands of hardened steel that formed the impressive protection. The strength was incredible. In some places, Castarius had learned, the suits could deflect bolts.

It made no sense. The greatest forges of Mars working with the closest observations of his order were unable to reproduce the material. Even now, with someone experienced in the ways of the armor on hand, Castarius was no closer to unlocking its secrets.

In the meantime, he was content to pray to the armor's machine spirit, to consecrate its power. It was hard work, considering the suit's spirit was inclined to hide itself from his touch. But if he concentrated hard enough…

"Come on, din! Snap tagetha ya stupid grot clamp!"

Castarius sighed. And then there was the ork. He turned to see Gort sitting on the deck trying to stretch a high-tension brace across the broad form of his snazzgun to better attach a melta gun he'd looted from the traitors.

"Ork, could you please keep it down."

Gort looked up at him. "What's da pro'lem, Beaky?"

_You're the problem, you throne-damned piece of air-wasting xenos garbage._ "I need to be able to concentrate."

"Din go rite ahead. I'z not gonna git in ya way."

Castarius was about to unload a stream of florid curses on the ork when the hatch opened and Jax stepped in. Dimitri was close behind him, walking with hands in pockets.

"Hey," Jax greeted. "What's going on?"

"Work," Castarius replied, not in a chatty mood.

Gort jerked a thumb to him. "Beaky's workin' real 'ard on sum kinda fing or 'nother, puttin' da armor tagetha an' such."

"Blessing the machine spirit," Castarius corrected. He looked at Gort. "I will not have my profession belittled by the likes of you."

The ork shrugged and went back to his snazzgun.

Dimitri walked up to the armor and ran his hand across the chest piece. "Is it charged?" he asked.

Castarius watched him, noting silently the look of admiration in the mortal's eyes. "Yes. In fact, it seems it was charged roughly an hour after putting it on the rack." Amazing, these suits.

"Don't surprise me none," Jax commented. "The old models didn't take much longer'n that. How're the guns?"

Castarius picked up one of the Impalers off the workbench next to him and slapped the breach open. "They've been cleaned, thrice blessed, and consecrated in holy oils, as per Mechanicus doctrine."

Jax took the offered weapon and looked it over. Once satisfied, he handed it back. "Good work, Castarius. Yer damn good at what you do."

_A century and a half of practice does that_, he thought, then said, "Thank you, Confederate. The tech-priests trained me well."

"Talent, I'll say," Dimitri added. "I couldn't have done it."

Castarius turned away so that neither man would see his scowl. _Of course you couldn't have done it! You're a Guardsman, a pathetic mortal in a world too big for you. You don't even deserve the honor of wearing one of these holy suits._ "I'm honored, but I really should get back to work."

"Okay, we'll leave ya to it," Jax said. The two men started to leave, walking across the deck to the hatchway.

"Take the ork!" the Techmarine blurted. It was foolish, but he couldn't keep it in.

Jax turned. "Huh?"

"I meant, um, maybe the ork should accompany you. This is quite a boring environment for such a restless thing."

"Wut?"

Jax looked at Dimitri. The smaller man shrugged, and the Confederate nodded. "Okay, then. Gort, come with us. And take yer gun with ya."

"Yah, Boss. See ya, Beaky."

_I hope you trip and vaporize your own head with that melta gun. _"Farewell."

_Sandalphon_

Four decades, it had been. Four decades since Adamus left the Eye with this ship and its crew. Four decades of raiding, murdering, stealing, sacrificing. Four decades of warfare, and in all that time, never had it been this bad. Never had he lost this many of his soldiers in one engagement.

24 Marines. It made Adamus want to hit something, so he did.

The deckhand flew across the bridge and landed upon an inconveniently placed wall spike. Adamus watched it die, blood squirting from its chest and twisted spine, and turned back to the forward occulus screen.

Morahame was going through the last phases of its transformation. The sacrifices on the surface had done their job, calling forth a warp portal on the world's equator. Screaming tendrils of eldritch energy spilled out of the tear in reality and spread across the planet. Hurricanes wracked the global ocean, the churning waters turning to blood.

The resort islands plunged beneath the hellish waves, and in their place raised jagged cliffs of black stone. The monoliths towered above blood sea, and as Adamus increased the magnification, he could make out winged daemons circling their tops.

At the warp portal, a massive creature tore into reality. It perched atop the largest of the monoliths, the claws of its feet gripping the sides of the rock to steady itself, and thrust back its wings. The Greater Daemon let loose a howl that echoed impossibly into the bridge around Adamus, and he grinned to hear it.

Maybe, he admitted to himself, not _everything_ had gone wrong.

"Adamus Luchance," boomed the warp-spawn, its coal-black eyes staring directly at the pict-recorder even from that far below. "I thank you for setting me free. The souls of your sacrifices were most tasteful."

Adamus bowed. "You are welcome, Lord Yev'i'kitzy'n. Consider this world my gift to you. May you rule it and many more for millennia to come."

Yev'i'kitzy'n reached down into the surf with an arm as big around as a battle tank and scooped blood from the sea below, then drained it into his gullet. The beast chuckled with pleasure from the simple taste and looked to Adamus again. "You have helped me, mortal, and now I owe you a favor. What shall it be? I sense this endeavor has left you hurting for men…"

Adamus didn't take the bait. "Your reemergence into the materium is reward enough for now, Lord. I've no need of a favor at the present."

Yev'i'kitzy'n laughed, a sound that would drive lesser men insane. It had no effect on Adamus, as he was quite beyond that point.

"So much like your father. He never worked with us when he could help it."

The mention of his mentor sent a chill down Adamus's spine. In its hilt, Zeruel jerked. He composed himself quickly enough and replied, "He still does, Lord."

"I'm sure. Now then, be gone with your ship! I have work to do."

Adamus bowed again. "Absolutely. Farwell, Lord Yev'i'kitzy'n."

No sooner had the occulus screen cut out than they were moving away from the planet. It wasn't until after they were well out of orbit that _Sandalphon_ spoke. It was quite a record, considering Adamus had thought he would have interrupted the conversation.

"Bastard hybrid," the daemonic strike cruiser hissed, "Thinks he's better than the rest of us."

Adamus ignored his whining. "Transfer to warp as soon as possible and set a course for Frakastle."

"Done, lord. But why Frakastle? That's in the Ghoul Stars."

"I have a friend there."

One Week Later, Holy Terra

Dimitri stood in the antechamber of the High Lords court, rocking back and forth on the balls of his armored feet. He had just discovered the technique and found it good balance practice, something all too difficult in the bulky armor.

Also, it helped him keep his mind off of the fact that Jax was across the room chatting up a lower-ranking Administratum secretary. He just didn't have the heart to tell the Confederate that the woman most likely had mental conditioning to interact in an attractive way with guests.

"Stop that."

Dimitri rocked around to face Marie. The heiress was sitting in one of the plush couches that dotted the chamber, sipping a drink delivered by one of the court's servants.

"Are you well?" he asked, walking over to her and crouching down.

She shot him a glare, but he didn't flinch. In the past two weeks, he'd gotten quite used to her looks of contempt. Now they were funny as opposed to intimidating. They reminded Dimitri of a child's anger.

"I'm fine." Dimitri took note of the fact that she didn't say 'peasant'. "I cannot abide the audacity of my father!" she said with sudden anger. "Making me _wait_? Who does he think he is?"

"The Master of the Administratum," Dimitri offered.

She mocked him wordlessly, and Dimitri smiled. So like a child.

That earned him another scowl. "Why do you grin like that?"

"No reason," he said, standing again. "However, I am sure your father is seeing someone important. In the astropathic communiqué he seemed overjoyed to hear you were safe."

That was true enough. The one they faked said so.

"Well, he had better be."

At that moment, the doors to the inner-sanctum opened and a man strode forth, flanked by a retinue of officers and priests forty strong. He was a young man, trim and dressed in a neat uniform, Cadian by the looks of it. Dimitri's offensive scanners ticked off at least three visible weapons: two bolt pistols and a power sword.

A flock of adepts descended on him and musicians brayed out a honking trumpet call.

"All hail Warmaster Slavere!" boomed one of his retinue, a highly decorated Commissar, "Supreme Commander of the Perseus Crusade!"

Jax appeared next to Dimitri, having found his chatty secretary more interested in this newcomer. "Who and what the hell does all that mean?"

"I haven't the faintest," Dimitri replied. "It looks like you aren't the only person getting a promotion today."

"No shit," Jax said. He let out a low whistle and shook his head. "Anyway, let's get the girl and head on in."

Dimitri turned around, but Marie was gone. He jerked around and found her moving through the crowd, adepts parting before her like water around a boat's prow, until she reached the man named Slavere.

"Warmaster," she said, giving him a bow, "I am—"

"Marie Xanthius," he cut her off. Dimitri picked up on the Cadian accent in his voice, layered in with the posh undertone he had come to expect from high-ranking officers. "I am all too aware of whom you are, and I must say, you are even more stunning in person."

Marie laughed. It was the laugh of an heiress.

Jax spat on the gold-trimmed tiles. "This is bullshit. That's our princess, we saved her."

"I'm inclined to agree."

"Fuck this fucker," Jax muttered, starting forward. "He can have her after we've done been rewarded."

Dimitri followed him in, debating whether to pull his rifle or not. In the end, he didn't have to. Jax simply grabbed Marie around the waist and plopped her over his shoulder, then used his free hand to push his way through the crowd, ignoring her protests.

Dimitri trailed him, the adept mob closing behind him. Just as he was about to enter the sanctum, Slavere put a hand on his chest plate.

"I am the new Warmaster," he said pointedly.

"And I'm the second-hand to an Imperial saint," Dimitri countered. He enjoyed standing up to an officer. It felt somewhat relieving. "I hope you don't want to find out which one holds more unofficial weight."

Slavere's eyes narrowed and Dimitri noted the man's brow was not used to being furrowed. He idly wondered just how old the man could be, probably not much over forty. Young to hold such an illustrious position.

The Warmaster took his hand off Dimitri and put on a fake smile. "Very well, proceed."

Dimitri turned and without pause walked into the sanctum. He cast a look back at Slavere and both men held each others' gazes until the doors closed, leaving Dimitri with the strange feeling that they would meet again.

Shaking the thoughts away, he turned his attention back to his surroundings.

Jax sat Marie down, letting her stand on her own two legs. He looked up and gave Xanthius a crisp salute. "President of the Administration, I got yer daughter back."

Despite the error in title, Xanthius seemed pleased. "I see that, Confederate. You have my sincere thanks." Jax beamed and accepted the thanks with a nod. Xanthius turned his crowned head to his daughter. "Marie, are you alright?"

"Yes, father." Dimitri watched her and could see her unease. She wasn't even meeting eyes with him. "I am unharmed."

"Good. Your spire is exactly as you left it."

Marie took the implication, bowed, and left through a side passage. When she was well gone, Dimitri looked up at Xanthius.

"Lord, do you plan to let her continue to think she is an Inquisitor."

The Master of the Administratum gave a slight simile, barely readable if it weren't for Dimitri's HUD. "For now," he said.

The Ecclesiarch coughed from his balcony, and Xanthius recognized him with a nod. The old preacher sat forward, clearly unhappy with what he was about to do.

"Fred Jax, step forth."

The Confederate looked back at Dimitri and winked. Dimitri gave him the thumbs up, and he stepped forward two dramatic steps. His armored body held rigid, he repeated the oath as read by the Ecclesiarch.

"I, Fred Jax,"

"I, Fred Jax."

"Swear by the Immortal God-Emperor of Mankind on the Golden Throne of Holy Terra."

"Swear by the Immortal God-Emperor of Mankind on the Golden Throne of Holy Terra."

"To uphold the tenants of the Imperial Creed and to persecute humanity's enemies wherever they hide."

"To uphold the tenants of the Imperial Creed and to persecute humanity's enemies wherever they hide."

"And to kill the alien, burn the heretic, and purge the unclean until all have been defeated or I have fallen in battle."

"And to kill the alien, burn the heretic, and purge the unclean until all have been defeated or I have fallen in battle."

"I am a living weapon of humanity, an instrument of His eternal will."

"I am a living weapon of humanity, an instrument of His eternal will."

The Ecclesiarch breathed a heavy sigh, steeled himself, and spoke the last words.

"Confederate, I now name you Imperial Battle Saint. With this title you may command your own select unit of soldiers, numbering no more than four hundred strong, without interference from any branch of Imperial armed forces. You may go where you please and kill what you please in the name of the Master of Mankind, our God-Emperor. Ave Imperator."

"Amen," Jax replied.

Xanthius looked down from his throne. "An escort will meet you outside to assist you in the rest of the formalities. We wish you luck. All of the Imperium is watching."

"Well then," Dimitri muttered, "No pressure."

(' ')

The adepts didn't seem half as concerned with them as they had with Slavere. In fact, they all seemed to keep to their work, maybe a little too much to their work. As Dimitri glanced around, it became immediately apparent why.

A man stood in the middle of the lobby, decked out in a dark great coat and cowl that partially hid his face, the symbol of the Imperial Inquisition emblazoned across his chestplate. He seemed determined to bring down the shiny atmosphere of the golden chamber.

Jax growled, "Tripe."

"Battle Saint," replied the Inquisitor, formal as always. He gave Dimitri a glance, and despite the polarized visor, recognized him instantly. "Guardsman Vlasna."

"_Equerry_ Vlasna," Dimitri corrected, promoting himself on the spot. If he was to follow around a saint, he would be damned to do it as a guardsman. "Head Adjutant to the Battle Saint."

"Nice," Jax said, holding out his fist. Dimitri bumped it.

Tripe didn't seem to find the gesture amusing. "If the two of you are inclined, we can begin the organization of your unit."

"Okie-dokie," Jax said. "Can we do it walking?"

"Very well."

As they started back to the landing pad, Tripe began laying out the plan in broad strokes. "As you already know, there are 300 suits of Shadow World armor held on Mars, all assumed to be operational. Based on that number, my ordo and a committee from the Adeptus Ministorum have constructed a docket of portfolios on possible candidates for recruitment into this program."

"From where?" Dimitri asked.

"Guard, mostly," Tripe replied, "Though there are one or two from the other Inquisitional branches and assassinorum groups. All are very distinguished individuals and heavily specialized in their fields." The Inquisitor produced a stack of leather-bound books from his great coat and handed them over. "I believe this would fall under the duties of an equerry, correct?"

Dimitri took the tomes without comment.

"Xanthius has graciously offered the _Hammer's Fall_ on extended loan, taking care of your transportation problem," Tripe continued. "Your first objective should be to form up a larger team with those portfolios. The two of you, an insane ork, and a Techmarine is not enough to take on the galaxy."

Jax nodded. "I hear that. So, what're we gonna call this unit?"

They walked under an archway and into the sunlight. In front of them, the shuttle that had ferried them to the surface was waiting, Castarius alongside it. All around, the Imperial Palace was gleaming.

Tripe stopped and looked at Jax. "We had a few names, but in the end, it was decided it should be up to you," he said. "So then, what shall it be?"

"The Dogs of War," Jax answered without pause.

For a moment, a smile crossed the Inquisitor's face. "Then on you go. The armor has already been shipped to the _Hammer's Fall_."

"Thanks, Inquisitor," Jax said, heading away. Dimitri merely nodded.

They boarded the shuttle with Castarius and were airborne in a minute. Tripe watched their assent, and from the building behind him came a voice.

"It is done."

Tripe nodded. "'And the Confederate shall let fly his Dogs of War to wreak havoc on the stars.' The prophecy will be fulfilled."

His peer stepped out from the shadows and brushed a strand of red hair from her face. "And now we wait," she said.

The two Inquisitors stood in silence and watched the shuttle climb higher into the atmosphere, carrying with it the fruition of ten millennia worth of work.

**Author's Note: There you have it. Jax has a new rank and a host of toys, Adamus is crazy, something's up with Tripe, and we're done with another story arc. The next section of the story is all about assembling the Dogs of War team suggested by Tripe, including members from several famous Guard regiments. Oh, and more battles and such.**

**And Adamus. I hope you guys like him. He's becoming quite a fun bad guy.**

**Oh, and if you were wondering what was up with that (' ') thing, it's due to the new Word document I'm using to type these things. Apparently it doesn't translate my dotted line scene breaks onto FF's upload page. So I had to improvise.  
**

**Also, some other spin-offs are going to come out of this. I simply have too many characters and ideas to keep them all contained within just The Confederate. More on that at a later date.**

**Hope you enjoyed this installment, and don't forget that word 'review' that I always mention.**

**Adios.  
**


	18. Chapter 18: Devils in the Jungle

"I don't wanna," Jax whined.

"No," Dimitri stated. There were several areas where he was willing to back down to the much larger Confederate, but not this one. "You're a saint, Jax. You _have_ to go to church."

Jax fidgeted in his armor, as if the white robe draped across his shoulders actually chaffed at his skin. "Yeah, but c'mon! Do I really need to give a speech?"

Dimitri nodded. "Once again, you're a saint. Public speaking comes with the territory." He handed Jax a prayer book, the place to read from marked with a ribbon. "Just read what I've underlined. You don't even have to do well. These people will be thrilled just to hear you."

"Can't you do it? Ain't you supposed to be my whachacallit?"

"Equerry," Dimitri corrected. "And no, you're the saint, you do it. Come on, we've got a few minutes before the chapel fills. Let's go over this."

Jax grumbled something about hating church since he was a kid, but opened the book and started to read. "Let us grather, my breastren, to cement the basslings of the God-Emperor. How's that?"

Dimitri suppressed a sigh. "That's a good start," he lied, "Now, let's work on your pronunciation."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 18: Devils in the Jungle  
_

The _Hammer's Fall_ command deck chapel was filled to the brim, with the entire main officer cadre crammed into the main floor pews. Junior officers and deck ensigns occupied the upper balconies, as did the few gun crew chiefs that were off duty. Brigham and Higgins sat up front. All heads were bowed in prayer to the magnificent statue of the God-Emperor that dominated the stage.

Dimitri stood to the side under an arch, and as he saw Jax step onstage, made the sign of the Aquilla. Emperor willing, this would go off without a hitch.

The congregation sang at his arrival, the distinctive chords of the_ Hymnal Imperialis, Verse 1563_ filling the cathedral from ribbed buttress to tiled floor. The reaction surprised Jax and he stopped for a moment, looking to Dimitri like a scared animal.

"Go!" Dimitri mouthed, pointing to the pedestal. Jax jumped into action and took up his place beneath the God-Emperor.

For a second, he looked confused again, but then remembered the first step and turned to the statue. He saluted the visage of mankind's leader, forgoing the Aquilla in a gesture that awed the gathered officers. It was taken for granted that saints paid their respects in different ways.

"So," Jax started, turning back to the gathering. The vox-coders linked to his pedestal projected his voice across the vast chapel. The hymns quieted, and Jax began. "Let us grather, my breastren, to cement the basslings of the God-Emperor. His diving bill is guides us along the road to retrieval and is a the funk of our worship, for He was is the God-Emperor.

"Horus, sumbitch, betrayaled Him to the foil Dark Goods and wound him in battle, so now your our mine master sits upon the Golden Throne, watching over all of humanities. So let's pray from the book of Lo-vid-i-cus, chapter 7, verse 42."

The sound of old leather chapbooks opening filled the chamber, and to Dimitri's amazement, the congregation followed Jax in prayer.

"O Emperor," Jax said, beginning the High Gothic-laden prayer, "Can ya forever watch on us and guide us though are moral valleys with your unseeable but diving hand. We besqueech ya, o Immoral God-Emperor, to forget us of are ignoramus mortal bins, and in return we give unto ya unendful whore shit. Amen."

"_Ave Imperator_," replied the congregation.

Jax closed the book with a bang that echoed across the room. "There, thanks for yer time. Now I'm gonna hand it over to Father Wilkius."

As the Confederate left the stage under the applause of the worshipers, he shook hands with the oncoming priest. Dimitri met him halfway and walked alongside him to the chapel's exit.

Once outside with the door shut, Jax went off. "That was a bunch of bullshit!"

"You did well."

"No, I didn't. I tripped up every other word and stuttered like a retarded buffalo."

Dimitri shrugged. "Okay, so maybe you did. But that's beside the point! Every person in that chapel took every word of what you said as if it had come from the Emperor himself. You could have gone up there and messed up completely and they would have been fine with it."

Jax frowned. "I ain't happy, Dimitri."

"So I can tell."

"I ain't doing that again until I've got every fucking word memorized," Jax said. "These folks here love me already. Other guys, on other planets, they might not take too kindly to me fuckin' up y'all's prayers."

"Very well, Jax," Dimitri said. He hid his smile well. "We'll go over it again."

The Confederate let out a breath. "Thanks, Dimitri."

"Well, what are friends and equerries for?"

"I hear that," Jax replied. He started off for the thruway. "C'mon. I need a damn drink."

(' ')

The stateroom given to Jax was massive, the largest on the ship, and typically reserved for guests. The roll of important people who had resided within its walls was inscribed upon the ceiling, numbering from a High Lord himself to lesser Mechanicum adepts, and currently a ladder-bound servitor was etching Battle Saint Fred Jax into the list.

The stateroom was twice that of the Captain's quarters and three-quarters the size of the bridge, which was located directly above it with an express elevator to link the two. The room was divided up into seven chambers, the living area, a dining hall, a master suite for the saint himself and several smaller, multipurpose ante-chambers. Currently, Jax had made three of the smaller rooms up into housing for his retinue, with one for each.

Jax marched into the living area and pulled a bottle of whiskey out of one sack. With remarkable deftness, he popped the lid and gulped down its contents, then threw it aside to break against one pillars that circled the room.

Dimitri pulled one for himself and sipped it while the Confederate went through another. On his third, Jax started to slow down enough to take a seat at one of the couches. The furniture creaked under his bulk, but held. Dimitri silently thanked the reinforcing braces rigged beneath the couch.

"So now what?" Jax asked, sipping his beverage. "We gonna get 'these guys'?"

Dimitri walked over to his desk and pulled out his portfolio on 'these guys'. He flipped it open and read as he walked.

"Sergeant Jayne Casey, 26 years old, Catachan born. Distinguished with six commendations for heroism under fire, twelve combat wounds, and awarded the Imperial Cross of Valor for his work at the Battle of Icharan Prime during the Novaguard War. 783 confirmed kills. Currently stationed with the Catachan 82nd on Swamprot." He looked up at Jax. "It's recommended we recruit Casey and his squad."

"Icharan," Jax said, sounding the word out by syllable, "Didn't you tell me you fought there?"

Dimitri nodded, taking a seat on the couch opposite Jax. "It was my first action with the 42nd."

"Hard fight?"

"It always is with Chaos," Dimitri muttered. "A mix of jungles and cities. The Catachans, this Sergeant Casey among them, stuck to the jungles while we slogged through the streets. I still don't know which one was worse."

"Well, we won't force the man." Jax took a drink. "So, how far out are we?"

"No idea," Dimitri said. "I'd ask the bridge, but most of them are still at the chapel."

At this Jax grinned. "Well, you know what that means."

Dimitri stared at him for a moment, letting his brain try and catch the implication. When it hit him, he recoiled. "No, Jax! I don't want to!"

"Hey, I didn't wanna give a damn speech neither, but life's a bitch."

"You can't mean—"

"Yup." The Confederate stood with a groan and headed into his bedroom. "Have fun talking to yer girlfriend."

Dimitri started to respond, but couldn't. Jax was right; this was fair. Grumbling, Dimitri grabbed his satchel and headed out the door.

(' ')

The navigatorium was dark as Dimitri entered. The lumen globes were turned down low, and he had a harder time seeing than he had upon his first visit. The null-tank was humming its low, sonorous moan, but aside from that there was no sound.

"Miss Cardigan," he called, "Its Dimitri Vlasna, Equerry to the Battle Saint. Are you here?"

"She's in the tank," came the reply. It was a male voice.

Dimitri looked to his left and saw the other Navigator step from the shadows. This was Yevina's brother. Last time, he had been the one in the null-tank, but his sister had given his name. Dimitri struggled to remember it.

"I'm Ulrich," he said helpfully, then held out his hand. "How may I be of assistance?"

Dimitri shook his hand. "Just need an update on the voyage time."

"Two days at this rate. That may change, though. The warp can be quite unpredictable."

"That isn't what your sister said last time we were here."

"She lied." Ulrich scratched at his beard. "Yevina can be, oh what's the word, arrogant at times. Sometimes I find her rather hard to put up with."

"I can see why."

The Navigator chuckled. "Glad someone else shares my sentiments. Care for a drink?"

"I would, Ulrich, but I'm afraid we've got a lot of work to do in just two days. Sorry." To his surprise, Dimitri realized his apology was real. "I'll stop by in a few days, once we've got this all dealt with."

Ulrich nodded. "I understand."

Dimitri said his goodbyes and left.

Two Days Later

Colonel Iron Hand Straken threw himself into the swamp, evading a stream of las-shot that stitched the air above his head. Belting an explicative made up on the spot, Straken stood into a crouch and opened fire with his shotgun. The successive blasts of steel shot tore through the brush and shredded two cult troopers trying to advance through the underbrush.

Straken rolled away from the return fire and pumped another shell into his weapon. The spent casing sank into the muck around his boots.

With a grimace, Straken noted just how poor these Chaos pukes were at navigating the swamps. His men could take them, he knew it, but not with this much space between them.

Straken nudged his micro-bead. "Animal, copy?"

"Yeah," came the low reply.

"Move around these bastards. See if you can't get a better fix on them. We'll cover you."

"On it."

Further down the rough skirmish line, the hulking form of Animal Mother moved into the trees with his squad of specialists, heavy bolter held like a rifle.

Straken whipped around the tree, shotgun ready, his bionic eye linking his aim to the nearest target. "Catachans!" he bellowed, "Let them eat las!"

The men of the Catachan 2nd Regiment opened fire from their concealed positions along the front. Lasfire tore through the foliage and ripped the front ranks of cultists apart, tossing corpses to the slush and scattering the remnant to ground behind exposed roots and reedgrass.

The return salvo was weak but still caused damage. Two Catachans near Straken fell, perforated by stubber rounds. One was Trooper Thraker, the other he couldn't recognize thanks to a missing face.

Straken snarled, a sound that quickly turned into a thundering roar. Ahead, Animal Mother's men had let rip at near point blank range. Cultists exploded under the heavy weapons fire and as they turned their attention to the surprise barrage, Straken saw his opening.

"Charge!"

The Devils broke cover and ran headlong toward the cultists, their long blades coming out as they moved through the jungle foliage. They moved fast, crossing the twenty meters in seconds, and fell upon the cultists.

Blades slashed and blood sprayed as booted feet churned the muck. The cultists, inexperienced in jungle warfare, were fighting their own loose footing as much as the Devils. The assault was measured in heartbeats, in bones cracked and heads severed, and ended before it had really begun.

Straken broke the neck of the opposing sergeant and dropped him, letting the swamp swallow the corpse. He cleaned the blade of his Catachan fang on the smooth steel of his bionic right arm before returning it to its sheath, the blood debt to his dead soldiers repaid ten-fold.

"Ten minutes!" he belted. "Then we move on!"

Across the swamp, Animal Mother reloaded his weapon with another ammo belt from the water-proof sling across his back. The massive trooper caught Straken's eye—the real one—and nodded. The Colonel nodded back, about ready to walk over and congratulate him when his vox-officer jogged up.

"Colonel, incoming message. General Chase"

He took the comm. horn and held it to his ear. "Straken here. What? Fine." He thrust the horn back into his assistant's hand and turned to his regiment. "Squad leaders, call back scouts and gather the dead. We're pulling back to base."

He ignored the ensuing grumblings of his men, but it took effort. They'd been out for three weeks, but that wasn't nearly enough. They weren't close to finding the cult's base. And now General Chase was issuing the recall.

Groxshit, is what it was.

(' ')

The first thing Dimitri noticed about Swamprot upon exiting the shuttle was its smell. The planet reeked as bad as its name suggested, with the smell of wet death pervading the entire landscape, even the landing site.

The base they'd landed in was like an island, an oasis of ferrocrete, razor wire, and prefab structures emerging from the dank swamplands. According to the records he had managed to pull on the planet, it was apparently the only slice of civilization on the death world.

Aside from the Chaos-worshiping cultists set up in the marshes, the world's only inhabitants were several indigenous tribes of feral men, but most recent data assumed them corrupted as well. The planet was useless, but Chaos wanted it, so the Guard was there.

"Waste of time to fight over this," Dimitri muttered.

Jax hummed his agreement. "Yup, but that's war: trading lives for real estate."

Dimitri nodded. The rare melancholic moment was one of the truest things he'd heard Jax say. _Throne, what if I'm rubbing off on him?_

"Somethin' smells good, though," the Confederate said, sauntering off toward the nearby mess hall. "Wonder what's cookin'!"

_Well, I suppose that worry is unfounded…_ "Jax, I'm going to go talk with the local CO. Try not to break or kill anything human, please. That would make my job easier."

"Okie-dokie. Radio if ya get attacked by swamp monsters!"

The intelligent part of Dimitri's brain rationalized the idea of a feral predator assaulting him inside a reinforced base as absurd. The primal part, though, turned his head and scanned the perimeter fence. One never could be too sure.

The strategium was, like all parts of the command dugout, built lower into the ferrocrete base to reduce the risk of any lateral frags breaking through. The rationale was sound, as losing the entire command staff from a single shell would be rather embarrassing.

That said, it did force Dimitri to duck as he entered, keeping his bulbous visor from scrapping the head of the doorframe. Such was the armor's height that even within the room he had to hunch over. The position was uncomfortable, but the look on General Chase's face was worth it.

"Uh, you're Vlasna?"

"Yes," Dimitri replied. He kept his visor up so as not to scare the man too much. "Equerry to the Battle Saint."

Chase was silent for a moment as he looked Dimitri up and down. "So, is he that big too?"

"Bigger, actually."

"Wow."

"I know." He smiled reassuringly. "General, have you recalled the Catachan 2nd?"

"Uh, yes, I have. They should be in shortly. How much bigger?"

"Bigger," Dimitri reiterated. "How long, do you think?" _Hurry or your mess hall is going to learn exactly _why_ Jax is so big._

"We're here," came a voice. "So what's so big a damn deal that we need to be called off swamp searching?"

Dimitri moved aside and let the speaker through. His HUD scanned the new arrival, pinpointing weapons and bionics, but Dimitri didn't need its help to recognize the man.

"Iron Hand Straken?" he asked.

The Catachan commander looked at him, boring into his eyes with the red of his unnatural bionic. "Only friends and idiots call me Iron Hand. You've got to be one of the two, but since we've never met that kind of narrows it down."

His suit's scanning suite picked up on the rising heat patterns in Straken's body, measured the distance between it and the target, and acted accordingly by pumping more energy into the armor's limb servos. As a result, his fusion pack kicked into a higher gear, whining audibly.

Dimitri forced the power levels down. "My apologies, Colonel."

"Great," Straken snapped. "I take it you're why I'm standing here, so what gives? Who are you and what's so damned important that you've called back my men?"

"I'm the equerry to an Imperial Battle Saint, and with orders from the High Lords of Terra we are procuring military resources for his immediate use in high-risk wartime operations." Dimitri produced a data-slate with the soldier in question's portfolio copied to it and handed it to Straken. "This man, one of your soldiers, is the first of our procurements."

Straken took the slate but didn't spare it a glance. "Sure, I'll just give up my men for the hell of it. Do you think I was born yesterday, son? Show me this Battle Saint."

"Right this way…"

(' ')

For some reason, General Chase pulled himself from his desk and followed them to the mess hall. The three entered just in time to hear the tail end of one of Jax's jokes.

"—so I say to him, 'how ya gonna get the siege tank out of the bunker now ya done sealed it in?' and he goes 'I'll just cut through the wall with my suit's laser cutter' so I said, 'Pal, if ya got a suit with a laser cutter that can get through a damn bunker, why not just take the damn suit to the fight and use it instead?!"

The Catachan Devils of the 2nd Regiment, all sweaty thousand of them crammed into the tiny mess hall, howled with laughter that rattled the corrugated roofing and shook the flak-board over the windows.

At the center of it, Jax took an offered flask and asked, "Who'd y'all say ya were?"

"The Catachans!" shouted one of the soldiers.

Jax hefted the flask to the air. "To the Catachans: best group of badasses I ever done met!"

"To us!" they echoed, gulping from their own canteens.

Jax took a swig and his eyebrows shot up. "What the hell is this?"

"Jungle Brew!" answered one of the Devils. "Like it?"

"Like it? I fucking love it!" Jax took another gulp and made another toast. "To Jungle Brew, best whiskey ever!"

As the next round of hoorays went around the room, Dimitri smiled. He had them all, just like that. With two toasts and a joke, they were his soldiers forever, no matter if they served with him or not. This was real power, the kind of power the Imperium was founded on.

Despite all his weapons and advanced armor, Fred Jax's most potent weapon was the one he didn't even realize he had: charisma.

Next to Dimitri, Straken was looking at the data slate. "Equerry Vlasna, I would give you my man now, but there seems to be a problem. There is no Sergeant Jayne Casey in my regiment."

"That can't be right," Dimitri muttered. If one of those portfolios was wrong, then the rest could be, and this entire journey was going to come to an abrupt end.

"It's right," Straken said. "I know every man in my outfit, and none of them have that name. We can check, though."

The cyborg Colonel turned to the mess hall and shouted, "Hey, anyone know a Jayne Casey?"

The Catachans looked at each other, confused. The consensus was: No, they didn't, and wasn't that a girl's name?

From the back, a voice spoke up. "I'm Jayne Casey."

A hulking brute of a man, even by Catachan standards, stepped out from the crowd. His hair was short and he carried a heavy bolter over his shoulder, the weight of the weapon digging into his flak jacket. A tattoo on his arm spelled out a nickname.

"Animal Mother," Dimitri read aloud.

The Catachans burst into laughter. "Jayne?" someone shouted, "Animal Mother's named _Jayne_?"

"Hey, Animal, isn't that a girl's name?"

The big man glared at them, but it didn't stop the jeering.

"Jayne! The man they called Jayne!" someone started singing.

"Shut it!" Straken bellowed, "And straighten up! Show's over, people. We're back in the swamps in ten! Get your gear and rally at the gate!"

Disappointed, the Catachans filed out of the mess hall, more than one depositing his flask on the table next to Jax in tribute. The Confederate watched them go, his expression neutral, and even when they were gone he didn't speak.

Dimitri looked at Animal Mother, eye-level with him thanks to his armor. "I'm Dimitri, Equerry to the Battle Saint." He indicated Jax with a thumb. The Confederate waved. "What should I call you?"

A shrug answered him, so Dimitri went with his birth name.

"Jayne, we're putting together a unit and we need good fighters. Your name came up as a recommendation. Will you join with us?"

The big man looked from Dimitri to Straken, but the colonel gave no support. "It's up to you, Animal."

"In that case," he said, "I'd like to think about it."

That sent up a red flag in Dimitri's mind, and he was about to press for an answer now when Jax cut in.

"Sounds good. Tell ya what," he said, placing a hand on Jayne's shoulder, "How 'bout we help root out yer Chaos problem, and then you can decide if ya like what ya see."

Jayne nodded, slowly.

Jax clapped his hands together. "Okie-dokie. Let's get started."

(' ')

The base swung into high gear, its full complement of three regiments mobilizing on orders from General Chase. The 436th Thantian Armored Regiment rolled out of the motor pool on its compliment of Leman Russ tanks and organized into a cross-country formation at the center of the base. Their CO, Colonel Veyen, took to his Demolisher custom tank at the head of the spear tip, waving his chainsword as he led his men in the rites of battle.

The 56th Liftine Shock Infantry, General Chase's own soldiers, who up until now had seen little action outside of guard detail, were mobilized into marching platoons. Sergeants checked their squads, running weapons drills and cinching rucksacks. The Liftine, who hailed from a steppe-heavy plains world, seemed out of place in their teal-colored ceramic armor, and would be similarly estranged in the wilderness beyond the perimeter.

For that reason, the entire coalition would rely heavily upon the Straken's Catachan 2nd and their expertise in jungle warfare. The Catachans would be the point of the blade, locating the Chaos positions before calling in the larger force at their rear.

This fact known, the planning went smoothly.

Straken and his Catachans were near the front gate, filling their canteens with fresh water from the purification tanks situated along the razor wire. It was four past noon, getting to be evening in Swamprot's 16-hour rotation, and they knew this was the point when the humidity would be at its worse.

"All their patrol patterns have a static axis around which they rotate, and recent indications show this as the place," Straken explained, circling a large part of the map with the tip of his Fang.

"That's maybe two clicks in diameter," Dimitri noted. His visor was down, his HUD scanning and committing the map to memory. "Isn't that a large area to cover?"

"Not for Catachans," Straken replied. He didn't smile. It wasn't a boast, just a fact.

Chase crouched down alongside them and pointed to the map. "My men will make a sweep to the south, just in case some of the enemy decides to try a flanking counterattack."

Straken laughed, earning a glare from Chase. "You find something particularly funny, Colonel?"

"Yes," the Catachan CO replied. "The idea that you Liftine brats are going to slog your way through that kind of bush without scout support is pretty damn humorous."

"You don't think we can do it?"

"Oh, no General. I think you can do it, just not in good time or without casualties." Straken gestured to his bionic arm and face. "See these? I got them fighting a Miral land shark. Big bugger came out of the muck and took a chunk right out of me before I killed it.

"Miral land sharks grow to four meters and have acidic saliva. Here, my boys have seen things twice as mean. So if you want to go wandering off into the bush all by yourself, I'm not going to stop you, but I would ask you to say hello to the Emperor for me."

Chase stared at the cyborg bushman for a full minute, then conceded. "Fine, we'll follow you in directly. But if you change paths at all—"

"You'll be the first to know," Straken assured him.

"Good," Chase said, getting to his feet. "I'll see to my men."

As he left, Jax looked down at Straken. "So, you gonna kick us out too?"

Straken shook his head as he stood, folding the map. "Depends. What's that rifle of yours do?"

Without a second's hesitation, Jax pointed his Impaler at the ground and squeezed the trigger, driving a spike through the ferrocrete with a hypersonic _thwack!_ A second later, pressurized swamp water sprayed up through the crack, siphoned from the muck beneath the base.

Straken glanced at the wound in the pavement. "You can come."

"Cool deal."

(' ')

It took five minutes off base for Dimitri to decide he didn't like the jungle. After two hours of stumbling through the foliage, having his visor steamed by the humidity, and getting his foot lodged in quicksand, his dislike had boiled over into sheer hatred.

When a branch swung round and smacked him in the shoulder pad hard enough to knock him around and into the water, his temper snapped and he started shouting curses.

At the front of the formation, Straken turned to Jax. "Your boy is making a little too much noise."

The Battle Saint nodded. "Yeah. Give me a minute."

Straken nodded and called a halt to his regiment, ordering the scout teams back from their outrider positions ahead of the group. Jax moved back along the Catachan column, his boots finding the sturdier stumps to stand on and dodging the weaker ones. He ducked low-hanging vines, moving without disturbing so much as a fern, acting like the jungle was second-nature to him.

He found Dimitri and pulled him out of the muck. "You alright?"

"No!" his equerry shouted. "Throne-damned jungle! I can't see a thing!"

"Pop yer visor."

"What?"

"Pop yer visor," Jax repeated. "Pressure difference is foggin' it up. Ain't worth usin' till we get in a fight."

Dimitri retracted the helmet and got a face full of rank swamp stench. "Great. Now I can smell the place."

"Well, at least ya can see."

"Wonderful. Let's get moving." Dimitri started forward, but Jax stopped him with a hand on his chest.

"Hold up a sec," the Confederate said. "I ain't lettin' ya go anywhere the way you been walkin'."

Dimitri sighed impatiently. "How have I been walking, Jax?"

"Like a jackass that don't know his way 'round the neighborhood. It's embarrassing."

Dimitri looked around at the Catachans. Each one was watching the exchange with humored expressions. In places, Dimitri saw money being exchanged. Apparently, his clumsiness was quite amusing.

Jax kept talking. "We're coming up on the target area, so we can't have ya making all sort of undue noise," he explained. "So listen careful. You been fightin' the terrain, and that ain't right. Yer just one guy. Ya can't fight the whole jungle, so work with it."

To demonstrate, Jax stepped moved over a nearby log and ducked past a stand of ferns. He moved quickly, but disturbed little of the swamp underfoot. "Move with it, move how it wants ya to, ya hear?"

"Yes," Dimitri replied, wondering just how it was that Jax seemed to be capable of doing everything. "Where'd you learn that?"

The Confederate shrugged. "Watchin' Straken's boys. Think yer ready to move out?"

"Yes."

"Good." Jax activated his comm. link. "Straken? We're ready back here."

Orders went out and the Catachans continued forward in the fading light.

The West Flank

Unlike the Catachan infantry formation, a tank column was more difficult to hide. Colonel Veyen knew this, and as such didn't even try.

He rode at the front of the tanks, blazing a path through the thick undergrowth with his tank's dozer blade. Around him the armored spear tip blazed through the jungle, crushing the scrub as they went and kicking up plumes of mud off their treads. Exhaust smoke belched from their roaring engines, and in the dusk the sound carried across miles of the swamplands like the growl of some ancient predator.

Veyen steadied himself on the barrel of the heavy bolter mounted next to him and turned to his assistant, Corporal Saiyen, who was standing behind the pintle-mount. "Dataslate," he ordered.

Saiyen handed him the tablet and Veyen thumbed the backlight, bathing his face in a green glow. Orbital feed from the troop ship _St. Hedorath_ put his column at grid square 7117 and moving north at a steady 34-klick rate. Veyen smiled to himself as he handed the dataslate out to Saiyen. They were running right on schedule.

When Saiyen didn't take the dataslate, Veyen turned, expecting to see the Corporal with his nose in that damn book he was always reading.

As it turned out, Saiyen's nose wasn't in a book. In fact, it was a giant bird-like creature that had its snout in the Corporal's face, slurping the contents of the dead trooper's skull down its gullet through a blood-stained beak.

The creature was straddling the tank's turret, foot talons digging into the armor for grip. Its rider, a cultist decked out in burnished black and red battle plate, stared at him with burning yellow eyes.

Veyen reached for his laspistol, but never made it, his hand snapped off at the wrist by the avian mount's razor beak. The Colonel let out a scream as the rider buried a spear in his chest, the crackling tip breaking through his artificer battleplate and lodging in his heart.

With a grunt, the cultist threw Veyen to the side and let out an inhuman call from a tortured throat.

Back along the formation, more of the bird cavalry descended from the trees and assaulted the tanks, beaks and talons breaking armor and spilling promethium to the swamp. Weapons fire bloomed from the Thantian vehicles and cut into the attackers.

Birds yelped death calls in the dark as heavy bolter and lasgun shot tore into them and sent them running wild. Riders were thrown to the muck, bleeding, but more descended and tore the pintle-gunners from their posts, quelling the defense.

Lieutenant Moyen, positioned as he was in the rearguard tank, evaluated the situation and ordered an all stop. Brakes squealed and the column ground to a halt, gunners bringing the tanks' heavy weapons to bear, but never had to fire.

As Moyen watched, the feral cavalry retreated back into the brush as fast as they had come. The Lieutenant grinned. These ferals were tough, all right, but in the end reacted like all foes in the face of the Emperor's superior firepower.

Reaching back, Moyen grabbed his vox-horn to get a damage assessment from the other crews.

Out in the swamp, the leader of the riders stopped and turned back to the column. He reached into his mount's rucksack and produced a gift from his masters: a melta bomb. With a grunt, the chieftain hurled the explosive charge through the air and into the water amidst the tanks.

The bomb went off with a wham, a wham that was subsequently multiplied a hundredfold by the promethium-laden swamp water. The 436th Thantian Armored vanished in an inferno of their own detonating fuel.

The Spear Tip

It was reaching pitch blackness when the scouts voxed back to the main formation with positive word on a target. Straken moved up with Jax, Dimitri and his vox officer and crouched amid the ferns. Ahead, nestled amongst some of the thickest jungle, was the Chaos encampment.

Rendered in the clean night vision of his HUD, Dimitri could make out a series of prefabricated structures—most likely barracks—surrounding a central ruin. The ruin was a tiered ziggurat, covered in mossy overgrowth, and in some places the stone pillars that lined its steps had fallen.

"So, that's what they're protecting," Dimitri muttered.

"What for?" Jax asked.

"I've no clue," Straken interjected, "But they want it, so that's a good enough reason for me to destroy it." He nudged his microbead. "Catachans, move up. Animal, bring your team forward. Got some hard targets need breaking."

"We need to call in the Liftine," Dimitri said.

Straken didn't reply, but he didn't protest either. Dimitri looked to Jax, received a nod, and activated his comm. system.

The Rearguard

Colonel Nocham walked back from the flaming wreck site and saluted his superior. "The Thantians are dead, sir."

General Chase sighed. "Wonderful. Now we have no armor and have to detour around this damn inferno."

"I can send out scouts, sir."

Chase shook his head. "No, keep the platoons together. The last thing we need is to run into the feral bastards that tore tanks apart with nothing more than our lasguns."

Nochan nodded his agreement and kept silent, waiting for further orders. He was still waiting when his vox-man tapped him on the shoulder.

The Liftine Colonel turned. "What is it, Cullen?"

"Word from the Catachans, sir. They've found the Chaos base and are requesting our support."

Nochan looked to Chase. "General?"

"Move out," Chase ordered. "Close spread. Keep in contact with check-ins at two minute intervals. And listen to your damn guides. Straken loaned them for a reason. I don't want to lose anyone before we even get to the fighting."

Nochan spread the word and the Liftine moved out, slogging through the swamps, led by the Catachan bushman attached to each platoon. Chase stayed right behind his guide, his uniform coat sloshing in the muck and dragging him down. It was a priceless family heirloom, handed down through the generations of Chases that had fought in the Emperor's many wars. It was older than some spacecraft, and had a value beyond pricing.

It was slowing him down.

With sudden anger, Chase tore the garment from his shoulders and dropped it to the swamp, earning him an approving grunt from the Catachan. He found himself appreciating the sentiment.

Maybe there was something to these ruffians.

The Spear Tip

Eleven minutes. For eleven minutes, they waited, crouched in the jungle, as the rest of the Devils spread out along the lines. For eleven minutes, they disarmed mines and crept slowly forward, closing the distance to the Chaos bunkers. For eleven minutes they observed, calculating the lines of fire of each hostile bunker, the numbers of cultist forces stationed in and around the ziggurat. For eleven minutes, they delegated targets to individual fire teams and double checked, triple checked every aspect of what was to transpire.

On the twelfth minute, they were set, and on the thirteenth, they sprang.

Animal Mother's heavy weapons team let off the first shots, a horde of rockets that streaked across the short space. Four of the five bunkers detonated under multiple blasts, their ferrocrete walls collapsing on the ammunition stores inside. Seconds later, the Catachans emerged from their concealed positions and charged through the twenty meters of jungle to the Chaos lines.

Jax was at the front with Straken, Impaler in one hand, chainsword in the other. He pulled ahead of the formation on his piston-like legs and vaulted the perimeter wire, drawing fire from the last bunker. Heavy stubber fire panged harmlessly from his armor as he climbed onto the squat structure and poured spikes into the fire ports, shredding the guncrew.

The Catachans saw this and pushed harder, flooding into the base, lasguns lighting up the night and casting rapid shadows through the branches. Dimitri was amidst them, firing over their heads at priority targets designated by his HUD: cultist sergeants and enemies carrying special weapons.

Straken led the push into one of the barracks buildings, his Fang ending the nearest cultist's life with a slash to the neck. Another rushed him and was repelled by his shotgun, kicked back through a window and into the swamp.

Jax barreled through the southern wall and cut down a swath of madmen, his chainsword roaring as it sprayed blood across his white armor. The Confederate parried a blow from a mutant and broke its face with his fist, sending it back onto Straken's blade.

The Colonel pulled free from the beast and nodded with respect to the Battle Saint. Jax returned the gesture and indicated the hole he had made upon entrance. Through it, Straken could see pyres lighting on the ziggurat's roof amid purple flashes of warp energy.

Outside, Dimitri and the rest of the Catachans hammered the opposite bunker, a fusillade of spikes and las-shot perforating its flakboard walls and shredding the cultists inside. A few tried to escape through the front entrance and were caught in a blast of flame from Animal Mother, the big man wielding his flamer one handed.

They had just finished when Dimitri noticed Jax and Straken moving up the ziggurat, weapons spitting fire at the enemies stationed on its flanks. He moved to join them when a commotion sounded from the rear.

Spinning, Dimitri spotted the Liftine infantry emerging from the jungle amid a flurry of weapons fire. Strange bird calls emanated from the obscured melee, and Dimitri turned to Animal Mother.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Tharrbacks," answered the Catachan. "Primitive bird mounts. The locals ride them when making war with other clans."

"Threat?"

Animal Mother nodded as he stepped forward. "We'll handle this. You go help the Saint."

Dimitri didn't reply. He was already running for the ziggurat.

(' ')

The Tharrback cavalry tore into the Liftine formation, trampling guardsmen underfoot. At this range, combined with the surprise of the attack, and the confines of the oppressive jungle, the Liftine were being slaughtered. Colonel Nochan was amongst the first to die, impaled upon a spear and slammed into the swamp beneath the talon of a Tharrback rider. The avian monster ducked its beak into the slosh and tore out the Colonel's throat.

Chase's chainsword cut into the creature's extended neck, snapping tendons and severing it completely. The head fell off and the body collapsed alongside it with a splash. The rider struggled to bring his spear around for revenge, but the General didn't let him, putting a las bolt into his head.

Chase deflected another spear, shot his attacker thrice in the chest and drove his chainsword hilt-deep into the advancing Tharrback's chest. The beast collapsed on him, over 130 kilos of dead weight crushing him to the ground. Chase's world went black as he plunged into the swamp. Brackish water rushed down his throat, choking him. He struggled against the dead bird atop him, but it was futile.

Blind and deafened by the smothering waters, General Chase started to slip away.

There was a splash and a rough, thick hand grabbed hold of his harness. Chase was pulled from the water, the cacophony of battle rushing into his clearing ears. He wiped his eyes and looked up to see Animal Mother looking at him.

"General," the massive Catachan said, setting him down.

Around them, the Catachans were engaging the ferals in hand-to-hand, and faring remarkably well. They ganged up on the enemy, four Devils to each Tharrback, and brought the creatures down through teamwork.

Chase pulled his chainsword from the waterlogged Tharrback, revving it to clear the guts from its teeth. His laspistol was gone.

"What do we do now?" he shouted.

By way of reply, Animal Mother shrugged his heavy bolter off his back and fired it one-handed into the fray. Chase tracked the shots and watched as a riderless Tharrback was torn open by the explosive shells. The animal flopped to the ground, dead.

Chase nodded. "Well, okay then."

The big Catachan pivoted, letting his weapon saw through the undergrowth, cutting down ferals, Tharrbacks and trees in a ripping torrent of bolts.

Chase looked down and saw Corporal Cullen. The vox-man ended at the, half-eaten entrails floating in the muck around him. Chase took the dead trooper's lasgun and blasted the nearest feral with a blistering of red.

Behind them, the Chaos base lit up, turning night to day.

(' ')

Dimitri scrambled up the ziggurat. Tremors rocked the structure and Dimitri struggled to keep his balance with his free hand. Above him, Straken and Jax were making their way up, the Confederate hacking into cultists as he climbed. Straken cleaned up after him, tossing the dismembered corpses down the stairs.

At the top of the structure stood a…thing. It was human, or at least had been at one point, and was swathed in a red robe. It was chanting, too, a low, sonorous wail that washed across the battlefield and made Dimitri sick with its corruption. His stomach churned and he had to fight his way forward, reciting litanies of protection under his breath.

Jax buried his chainsword in the chest of a cultist and crushed another's head, then sent both tumbling down behind him. With nothing else to halt him, he broke into a run, firing with his Impaler. The spikes didn't hit the emaciated sorcerer, but rather arced past it as they made contact with an invisible shield of warp-stuff.

Jax snarled and dropped the rifle, gripping his chainsword double-handed as he dashed up the last few steps to close with the foe.

The sorcerer parried his lunging swipe with a jagged bone spike, hardened to kill-strength by dark powers. Both blades repelled, sending the combatants reeling, but Jax was quicker on his counter-swing and with a mighty yell landed a downward chop in his opponent's collarbone. The teeth sawed down through bone and gristle and split the sorcerer in two, sending its halves toppling to the altar upon which it had perched.

Abruptly, the Chaotic warp activity came to a halt. The tremors stopped and the energy dissipated, leaving the battlefield to sound like it should: with natural gunblasts and human screaming.

Jax kicked the sorcerer's torso from the ziggurat and waved Dimitri and Straken forward. They both clambered to his height and were helped up to the bloodstained altar.

"War: won." Jax declared.

(' ')

With the sorcerer dead, the warp presence on Swamprot was shut off, breaking the invisible bonds that had linked the feral tribesmen to the demagogue's will. Free thought returned to the ferals, like a splash of cool water on their dry, constricted minds. The Tharrbacks were freed from the bloodlust that had gripped them and their semi-docile nature returned, allowing them to share in their masters' confusion.

Both rider and mount were equally stunned, unable to act for a moment.

In that moment, the Catachans and what was left of the Liftine plowed into them with everything they had, slaughtering the lot in mere seconds.

Afterwards, Animal Mother and General Chase walked out of the jungle with their men and headed into the ruined Chaos base. Chase was tired and wounded, but not defeated, and neither were his Liftine.

The Battle Saint met them at the bottom of the ziggurat, accompanied by Colonel Straken. Jax shook Chase's hand, congratulating him on his part in the victory. Chase tried to praise Jax's heroism, but the Confederate would have none of it.

"I'm just doing my job, same as you," he said with a grim smile. "When the galaxy's clean, I'll take yer thanks."

From then on, Chase just watched as Equerry Vlasna spoke with Animal Mother.

"Well, now that you've seen us in action, are you on board?" he asked.

The big Catachan thought for a moment and then inevitably turned to Straken. "Sir?"

Old Iron Hand nodded to him. "Do it, son. It's a good chance to get you out of this footsloggers life."

"Okay." Abruptly, Animal grabbed the Straken and gave him a crushing bear hug. "Goodbye, Colonel."

Straken managed an awkward pat on the big man's back. "Goodbye Animal Mother."

Animal released his commander and turned to Jax. "I'll go with you."

Jax shook hands with the Catachan. "Okie-dokie. Welcome to the team."

(' ')

It was dawn by the time they got back to the base, tired but victorious. Dimitri directed Animal Mother and his squad into the shuttle before joining Jax at the base of the ramp. Straken was there, talking with the Confederate, and yet again Dimitri managed to catch the tail end of a Jax joke.

"—so then he turns around and goes, 'What the hell're ya doing with my sister?' and I go, 'Sure as to hell not eating dinner!'"

Straken and Jax burst into laughter, but the humor was lost on Dimitri. Apparently, the beginning was crucial to making the punch line. He made a note to ask about it later.

"Jax," he said, "We're running a little behind, so if you…"

Jax nodded and looked at Straken. "Well, Colonel, looks like we've gotta get running. I'll take care of yer boy."

"I'm sure you will," Straken said, shaking with the Confederate, "Maybe we'll meet again."

"Maybe."

As they walked into the shuttle, Dimitri suppressed a scoff. _In this galaxy? Not a chance._

The shuttle's pilot, itchy to move after a full day of waiting, powered the craft skyward with vigor. The acceleration was past what was considered safe, but Dimitri didn't care. He was passed out before his ass hit the grav-seat.

**Author's Note: Not much to say today other than 8,000 WORD CHAPTER!! That is definitely the longest chapter yet. Hope you liked its length, the amount of destruction in it, and also the appearance of the first cannon character with Iron Hand Straken. I was quite nervous about it, but I think I avoided butchering the character.  
**

**This new arc will concern itself primarily with gathering the Dogs of War, so be ready for more chapters like this for the next few weeks.**

**Oh, and I have to give thanks to the reviewer who pointed out the similarities between the Castarius/Gort relationship and the Nick/Jax relationship from Brain Damage. I hadn't realized that until you mentioned it.**

**Anyway, later.  
**


	19. Chapter 19: Berserker Barrage!

Dimitri found Jax in the 'Hot Deck'—the recently customized subsection of the embarkation deck devoted to housing the Dogs of War—supervising the new additions to the team. Animal Mother and his six-man squad wore their new armor, moving about the room's obstacle course in awkward stances, unaccustomed to the newfound power.

Jax was in teaching mode, explaining the philosophy behind CMC-equipped warfare in his typical mix of garbled tech jargon and homespun logic.

"You're pushing the servos too hard with yer body, ain't giving 'em enough time to compensate. Keep it up and you'll overload the kinetic throughput. Ease off!" Jax stepped over to Animal and stopped him with a hand to the shoulder. "Remember: you lead the steer, and he'll follow ya. Kick him in the ass and he'll just kick ya back."

Animal nodded. In a moment, he was walking with more fluidity and less jerking. His squad followed their sergeant's example, and before Dimitri's eyes the fruits of Jax's teachings ripened. After a few more careful comments the Catachans were moving naturally, swinging around cover and engaging dummy targets with short bursts of spike fire.

Happy with his work, Jax turned to Dimitri. "Hey! Wait, why ain't you in yer armor?"

"What?" Dimitri asked, looking down at the flak vest he was wearing. "Is there something wrong with this?"

"Uh, yeah. It's against a standing order. Duh."

Dimitri scratched his neck. What standing order? He couldn't think of one other than….

"The twelve hour thing? That applies to _me_ too?"

"Absotively posolutely. Standing order for all Dogs, especially including you." Jax crossed his arms. "Yer right next to me all the time. I can't keep worrying about you; gets in the way of being all saintly and such. Ya gotta practice, Dimitri, so twelve hours."

"But Jax, twelve hours is half the day." The Confederate just stared at him. "Okay, okay, I'll put it on."

"Cool deal. So what's up? Brigham got us that ETA yet?"

Dimitri nodded, pulling up the information on his dataslate. "We're just under two days' journey. Should be in the Talaris system by lunchtime tomorrow, meaning that you'll still have to read the Daily Prayer in the morning."

For a week now, Dimitri had made it Jax's duty to read the Emperor's Daily Prayer over the ship's vox network every morning. It was fair, he supposed, considering Jax would have nothing to do with free speaking before a congregation again. Plus, his gothic was becoming more and more passable with each recitation.

He still loathed it.

"Fucking stupid-ass prayer," he spat.

Dimitri bristled at the words, but he fought the sensation down. "I'm going to act as if I never heard that."

"Thanks. Anything I should know about these boys we're going to meet?"

"Our specific man is Major Harken Manker and his platoon, attached to the 426th Death Korp regiment out of Krieg," Dimitri said.

"Why attached?" Jax asked. "'Why not just part of'?"

Dimitri was surprised. Jax really was catching on fast to Guard organization. "Their original regiment, the 36th, was destroyed by Tyranids. Only they made it out and were transferred to the 298th where they stayed until those men died in an ork Waaagh!. Two more regiments came after those, both dying in battle with only Manker's platoon walking out."

"And now?" Jax asked.

Dimitri consulted his slate. "Looks like they're fighting another war on Talaris II against rampaging hive gangers."

"Ready to lose their whole damn team again?"

"I'd doubt it," Dimitri replied. "Fighting gangers isn't that hard. A little grim, maybe, but not hard. Even well equipped the worst they can do is knock out a tank."

Jax scoffed. "Well, that ain't exactly difficult."

"When will you be done insulting the Leman Russ?"

"The second it stops sucking ass." Jax hacked and spat a wad of chew on the deck.

Dimitri stared at him. "You are the single most offensive man I have ever met."

"And somehow I'm a saint," Jax said with a shrug. "Galaxy's weird like that."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 19: Berserker Barrage!  
_

Talaris II, Hive Vermillion, Two Days Later

The battle for Hive Vermillion had been going strong for weeks after the uprising. A counter advance from the other hives had been made, the PDF leading the advance backed up by elements of the 78th Volpone Armored Regiment. In an armored spearhead they had taken twenty kilometers back from the enemy. It was a rapid, shockingly effective advance, and then it was over.

For a month they had made no further progress, stalemated in a war of attrition. The Volpone's tanks, the force that had proved so valuable initially, were less effective in the more rubble strewn districts, where their movement was restricted, rendering them more vulnerable. Without the tanks, the PDF was unable to break the counterattack, and the campaign's commanders started looking for assistance.

Recognizing the importance of Vermillion's production capability, Segmentum Command deployed the Death Korps.

Presently, Lord Commissioner Gordos was explaining the situation in the reclamation campaign's HQ.

"They pushed through the front three days ago," said the Commissioner. He gestured to the map table, upon which the several levels of the hive were laid out in separate diagrams. "At last count they were here, moving up Arterial 7 toward the primary ventilation turbines."

"The what?" Jax asked.

The Commissioner pointed to the turbines in particular. "They're three immense engines at the center of the hive that circulate air from the lower levels and out through smog vents along the city's spine. Without them, the low districts would die from exposure to the pollutants."

"So shut them down," Dimitri put in. He drew an odd look from Jax, but Gordos understood.

"That's exactly what the 426th is working toward. My men are running distraction ops along the front to keep the heat off their backs. The second they shut those things down, we're pulling out to let the city rot."

"And the Death Korps themselves?"

"They should be fine," Gordos replied. "Those men were born on an irradiated hellhole. They understand hazardous environment combat more than anyone. When we leave, they stay to finish the job."

Jax stepped up to the table and sat a heavy finger on the turbine symbol, earning a look of awe from Gordos. "I need to be there. Now."

"Absolutely, Saint Jax." Gordos turned to his aide. "Zaite, have my personal Chimera readied, and ready sixth and eighth platoons for an honor guard detail."

"Yes, Lord Commissioner!"

Gordos turned back to Jax and Dimitri with a grin. "You get nothing less than the best."

Minutes Later

"_This _is the best?" Jax asked. "This is a damn metal box!"

The open-topped Chimera bucked as it moved toward the front, crunching over piles of rubble and downed razorwire. Behind it was a formation of PDF troopers, blue surplus flak armor jostling as they ran to keep up with the transport. There were few lasguns amongst them, most toting a local pattern of stamped steel autogun Dimitri had never seen before.

"It's just a Chimera, Jax," he said. "You rode in one on Dancer."

"Yeah, but at least that one had some damn armor!" Jax replied.

"So does this one."

To prove his point, Jax cocked back a fist and drove it through the side armor into the air beyond. He yanked his scuffed hand out and looked at Dimitri expectantly.

"You may have a point," Dimitri conceded.

"Damn straight," Jax said, walking up to the driver. "Pick it up a bit, damnit!"

"Sir, if we go faster we'll lose the escort."

Jax groaned out a curse and turned to Dimitri. "By the time we get there, the damn war'll be over."

They reached the front a moment later. Tenement buildings formed a rough perimeter, each one lined with razorwire and every floor filled with heavy weapons teams. Snipers dotted upper floors and the roofs, adding the occasional harsh bang to the non-stop slamming of autoguns and heavy bolters.

No-man's land was, on first glance, composed completely of a single rubble-strewn street, but as Dimitri looked at it, the truth became visible. The street, like the buildings around it, had several layers, each one built beneath the other on long steel colonnades, meaning that the battle wasn't just raging before them, but on levels for several kilometers below them.

They rolled up to the street and immediately drew fire from the hostiles encamped along the opposite buildings, a screaming hail of autogun fire that spanged off the Chimera's armor and shredded the squad of PDF troopers directly behind them. As the rest of the local troopers scrambled for cover, Dimitri found himself hunkering down as well.

Jax didn't take cover. "Why the hell we stopping?" he shouted to the driver. "Get this piece of shit moving, damnit!"

The driver did the opposite: he pulled them back into their own frontlines. "No way! We pull out into that much fire and we're dead!"

Jax grabbed the man and pulled him off the deck, uniform collar held in a vice-like grip. "You know who the Emperor is?"

"Of course!"

"Well I'm one of his saints, so going against me is going against the Emperor!" Jax roared. "You gonna go against the Emperor, son?"

"Never!" the driver shrieked.

"Good!" Jax tossed the man back into his seat. "Then get this piece of shit in gear!"

A shot rang off the armor next to Jax's head, and the Confederate stood up to return fire. His salvo exploded against the front of a tenement, shredding the squad of gangers crouched there.

"Dogs of War!" Jax bellowed, "Roving suppressive fire on target building!"

As the Chimera moved out onto the street, Animal Mother's squad took up position along the vehicle's left flank and opened fire. They sprayed the front of the tenement building, walking streams of spikes into windows and doors. As Dimitri joined them, his HUD started coordinating trajectories with the men around him, making sure no soldier shot the same thing, wasting not a single round.

Jax loosed a rocket, the explosive shrieking through a window and detonating against a crucial support. The tenement structure shook as the internal steel holding it up buckled under the blast force. Vibrations shook off the excess brickwork and the structure collapsed on itself, one level atop another, ripping free of the street decks as it crumbled. Far below it hit bottom and vanished in a cloud of debris and smoke.

Dimitri ceased fire. "Good shot."

"That was fucking divine," Jax replied.

They rumbled on down the street. Behind them, the PDF emerged from cover to secure the extended front, leading with undisciplined volleys of autogun fire. Jax stepped to the back of the Chimera and watched the receding men.

"Looks like they aren't following us," Dimitri said.

Jax nodded. "Good."

Primary Turbine Complex

Trooper Miloom crawled up the ash slope, keeping his head down to avoid gunfire from the precipice above. It had gone like this for seven hours, his regiment slowly moving up the ashen dunes that had built up around the west turbine. Colonel Corwall had said the ash was made of pollutants that coagulated in the turbines and were ejected during processing. Colonel Corwall had then exploded from a direct mortar impact, shifting command to 2nd platoon's lieutenant.

Another hail of autogun fire rained down the slope, churning up the ash around Miloom. Trooper Retick was hit, the rounds tearing through his flak coat and sending him tumbling back down the slope.

Miloom swore and continued forward, crawling like he'd been trained: lasgun forward, pull yourself up, lasgun forward, pull yourself up…

He dug his mask into the ash as he went, ignoring the impacts all around him, focusing singularly on moving up, getting closer. Another blast and Trooper Tyril detonated, strips of cooked meat and fabric splashing across the slope. The rest of the regiment continued to crawl, ever so slowly, unfazed.

Behind his gas mask, Miloom wore a thin, grim smile._ These gangers don't get it_, he thought. _We're the Death Korp. We never stop._

Ten meters above him, the front ranks rose to their knees as they entered lasgun range. Red las-shot cracked across the distance in volley-fire, reaching up to the network of grid-iron catwalks that dominated the side of the turbine. Gangers, perforated by the hail of fire, fell from the ironworks and hit the ash with dull thuds. The gangers with small arms retreated deeper into the complex, leaving their friends with heavier weapons behind to die.

As the last ganger hit the deck, a soldier of the first rank stood up and beckoned to the rest of the regiment. Miloom recognized him immediately.

"They've broken! Onward! Crush the bastards!" he shouted, "For Kreig and the Emperor!"

Following Lieutenant Manker, Miloom and the rest of the 426th charged up into the turbine complex.

7th Arterial Highway

As the Chimera rolled onto the arterial highway, an eight-lane pavement track that twisted up through the hive, connecting with its fellows and branching off in small interchange knots. The driver picked up the pace. Abandoned vehicles littered the roadway, from cargo haulers to civilian cars. The Chimera weaved around the larger ones and simply crushed the smaller ones.

Dimitri looked up. The hive, highways, and blocks of buildings disappeared above him in a bank of darkness. It gave him a profound sense of vertigo and he suddenly found the deck of the transport much more worthy of consideration.

Jax let out a whistle. "How many people live here, anyway?"

Despite himself, Dimitri pulled the statistic from the depths of his Schola Progenium education. "Hive cities typically indicate a population of 30 to 40 million in one super-structure built up over generations of normal civilization typically due to harsh environmental conditions."

Reciting the statistics helped. It kept his mind off the vertical insanity around him.

One of the Catachans signaled from the front of the transport. "Eyes on six friendlies, all KIA."

Dimitri followed Jax forward and looked at the scene. Six Death Korps troopers were laying face-down on the pavement, surrounded by spent las-magazines and a pile of dead gangers.

"They went down swinging," Jax commented.

Dimitri magnified his visor feed as they passed, ticking off injuries on the friendly troopers. Ragged holes torn in their flak coats indicated autogun fire at close range, but not one had fallen in close combat. He counted at least forty dead gangers. These Kreig men were true to their reputation.

"Gas masks?" Jax asked.

Dimitri nodded. "They're used in hazardous environment actions, but they wear them constantly."

"Why?"

"Not sure," Dimitri shrugged. "I think it's something to do with their homeworld. Tradition or some such. You'd really have to ask them."

"Think I might."

They finally caught sight of the east side of the turbine complex ten minutes later. The turbines themselves were each at least 300 meters in height, massive cylinders of blackened steel. The level equal to their highway met the eastern turbine on slopes of ash, the product of coagulant kickback from the turbine proper, and from this distance they could already hear the roar of the massive fans.

Jax kicked the back of the driver's seat. "Hold up a second."

The Chimera ground to a juddering halt and switched off. For a moment, the only sound was the howl of the turbines, and then Jax spoke.

"How you wanna go in?"

Dimitri looked up at him. "Hey, I'm just your equerry. You're the strategist."

Jax frowned and pulled a cigar from one of his ammo pouches. He lit it and took a long draw as he considered the turbine before them. Dimitri watched his face, tracking the brown eyes as the Confederate examined the angles of attack on the slope ahead.

"Okay, so here's what we're gonna do…"

(' ')

Inside the complex was even louder than outside, the roar of the turbines compounded by the ferrocrete walls, and if it weren't for his insulated mask, Miloom was sure his ears would be blown. Even so, the thrumming reverberated inside his skull, forcing him to blink away starbursts of migraine-induced color.

Gangers were everywhere, emerging from every surface. Lieutenant Manker was next to him, leading the charge into the facility, double-tapping gangers as they dropped from ceiling grates.

The rest of the regiment flowed through the floors above and below, advancing by squads. The ping-whine of ricochets echoed throughout the facility, accentuated by the intermittent bang of grenade detonations.

Ahead, a mob of gangers whipped around a corner and opened up with their autoguns. Manker ducked aside and returned fire, but Miloom wasn't as fast. A trio of flat rounds punched through his coat and expanded in his gut. He fell to the floor and loosed another clip of ammo before a fourth round caught him in the head.

Above him, Manker finished mowing down the gangers and knelt next to Miloom's corpse. He paused for less than a second before stripping all usable ammo from the body. He picked up Miloom's lasgun in his left hand, tucked the man's knife in his belt, and continued down the corridor.

(' ')

Jax blew a hole in the outer wall, charged through, and backhanded the first ganger he saw over a railing. The man fell, screaming, into the whirring blades.

The Dogs rushed into the complex after their commander, scything down the rampaging gangers with contemptuous ease. Dimitri stayed alongside Jax, bullets bouncing off his chest as he advanced, slaughtering everything his visor tagged as hostile. The feeling of invincibility was strong now: nothing these men could hit them with had a chance of penetrating, and they were unstoppable.

Dimitri heard someone murmuring the Litany of Retribution and realized with a start that it was him.

A ganger ran forward and hammered a wrench against his visor. Dimitri reached out and felt the slight resistance give as he crushed the man's skull. With a kind of morbid satisfaction, he picked the body up and hurled it down the hallway into group of ten more. The gangers tumbled to the ground and Dimitri blasted them with spikes, killing all before they could stand again.

"Yeah!" Jax shouted. "Style points! That's what I'm talking about!"

Dimitri watched the Confederate put a series of spikes into the cables holding up a catwalk. The cables snapped and sent the gangers camped on it falling into the turbine below.

As they moved on, Dimitri realized the battle was less a military operation and more a slaughter. He couldn't apply terms like pushing and falling back to the tactics, as the gangers didn't seem preoccupied with such conventions of warfare. There was only killing and dying, and the Dogs were undeniably winning.

Dimitri opened a comm. link. "Jax."

Ahead, the Confederate put his boot through the chest of a bleeding ganger and used his flak pistol to plaster a wall with another's brain. "Huh?"

"Does something seem wrong to you?"

"Like what?" Another two enemies died under his chainsword.

A bullet panged off Dimitri's shoulder, drawing his attention up above. He spotted a sniper perched atop a pipeline, marked it with a priority nav-mark and let Animal's squad annihilate the position with an array of rockets.

"Well, these gangers aren't even taking cover…"

"Hey, I ain't complaining," Jax replied. "Makes it easier to kill 'em."

Dimitri didn't reply. Something was very wrong here. Taking cover wasn't complicated, it was instinctual. Even an untrained rabble should at least be able to figure out the difference between getting shot and not getting shot.

Not that it would have mattered much, the way Jax was barreling through the complex. Already he was leading them down into the bowels of the structure, down the successively steeper staircases that ran the perimeter of the cylinder. Where the stairs were weak, Jax broke through them intentionally, usually directing his way to a landing right on the heads of the gangers.

"Where are we going?" Dimitri asked, trying not to pitch over as he hurried down after the Battle Saint.

"Down!" Jax replied.

"Why?"

"Our boy's planning to shut this place down, right? Well, they always keep the important, really breakable shit at the bottom!"

Dimitri found that he couldn't argue with that logic and pulled up the schematics he'd scanned. "Jax, the bottom floor links to the other turbines via a series of open-air bridges. We can use those to the others."

"Great!" Jax chirped as he broke a ganger's spine. "How high up?"

Dimitri gulped as he read the figure. "Two kilometers."

"Well, make sure you don't trip."

**Author's Note: I know, I know. But hey, I figured better short and late than never. I realized I wouldn't be able to deliver an epic like that last chapter at about noon yesterday, so I figured I would just focus on polishing what I had and getting it out before my dead-zone (called such because it's _way_ too flexible to be called a deadline) expired. Also, I'll have you know the reason why I was still writing it yesterday is a very good one. Like, Confederate-related companion spin-off story good.**

**Oh, and can anyone name what the chapter title references? If you can, you are one great gamer.  
**

**And there you have it: a short note for a short chapter. Later.  
**


	20. Chapter 20: The Sound of Silence

Dimitri opened his eyes and sat up. His armor groaned under the strain, and somewhere midway down his torso, a piece of the neo-steel was imbedded in his gut. It hurt just to move, but he fought his way into a sitting position where he promptly threw up a long strand of flaky blood.

He was surrounded by complete darkness. When activated, his flickering shoulder lamp did little to push back the black, and all he could make out in his immediate surroundings was a pile of rubble, twisted steel, and a lot of bodies.

Some were Kreig, but most were gangers. Nowhere did he see any dead Dogs. That latter fact was neither surprising nor comforting. He tried to raise Jax on his COM suite, but got nothing but static in return.

Finally, he sat back and looked up into the darkness.

"What the hell happened?"

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 20: The Sound of Silence_

Four Hours Ago

"No ya don't," Jax muttered, putting seventy-three spikes into a gaggle of gangers running up the roadway. The men juddered and twisted as they fell, their limbs ripped in different directions from the varied impacts.

Animal Mother's Catachan squad stood with the Confederate, their Impalers adding to the report of his own. Between them, they constituted the entirety of the complex's northern defenses, and so far, they hadn't broken a sweat.

Dimitri stood behind the front, speaking with Lieutenant Manker.

"Do you have men planting the charges?"

Manker nodded. "They'll be done soon enough. Structural points on these turbines are difficult to find."

A truck exploded on the road, engulfing twenty more gangers in flame. Jax and his Catachans hollered their approval.

Dimitri did his best to ignore them. "Lieutenant, this may not be the best time, but the Battle Saint's purpose here is to—"

"Dimitri! Dimitri! Dimitri!" The words were followed by a literal punch in the arm. "Did you see what Animal did to that truck?"

"Yes, Jax."

"It exploded! Like, a lot!"

"I saw, Jax."

"Good! Just checkin'!"

The Confederate went back to fighting and Dimitri continued his job. "As I was saying, the Battle Saint's purpose here is to recruit more members for our Dogs of War task force."

Manker stared at him. With the red lens gas mask, Dimitri couldn't read his face. The intention was to unnerve an onlooker. It succeeded.

"Um, your men came up as a suggestion," he continued. "What do you think of joining us?"

The Krieg officer ignored him, marched to the line and added his lasgun to the defense, leaving Dimitri standing in confusion. He was about to join when a voice burst in over the vox.

"Oh defenders of the turd bins!" Jax began. "I speak today as a feller soldier working for the good of the Emperor, and I believe it's time for me to say good words!"

Feeling it his duty to do so, Dimitri stepped up and grabbed Jax by the arm. "What are you doing?"

"Damnit, Dimitri! I'm trying to say good words!"

"No one wants to hear your good words," Dimitri replied. "We're in the middle of a battle."

Jax looked hurt. "But that's the best time for good words!"

Animal Mother leaned back. "I wouldn't mind some good words right about now."

"See?" Jax asked.

Dimitri pointed at Animal. "You: shut up."

"Belay that order!" Jax shouted. "Don't tell my sergeant to shut up! He was sayin' nice things!"

Dimitri frowned. "Nice things are nice and all, but—"

"Words are nice! Which brings us back to why you're being all stingy and not letting me say my good words. Didn't you want me to give speeches?"

Behind Jax, a looted tank exploded from a rocket impact, blowing steel across the roadway. A cheer went up along the line. To Dimitri, they were cheering Jax's checkmating of him.

"Fine, Jax. Say your words."

"Thank ya much."

As Jax went on about victory and glory and something about the wiseness of an aging buffalo, Dimitri went back to trying to talk to the Kriegian commander.

"Manker, have your men set the charges?"

The lieutenant looked up. "Yes, but they're being overrun!"

Later

He wandered in the dark without his rifle, and for the first time in weeks suffered the feeling of weakness that came without its reassuring weight. Dimitri hated how he had become dependent on the Impaler. If pressed, he didn't know if he could even use a lasgun comfortably. That scared him.

It wasn't until six minutes of wandering that his weak lamp found the first sign of his unit. It was one of the Catachans, lying partially under a slab of concrete. His visor was a crushed mess of bloody glass and his armor was rent open in several places. Dimitri knew without checking that he was dead. He cased the body, but found nothing useful save the Catachan Fang strapped to the man's thigh and his shoulder bulb.

Dimitri unscrewed his own weak lamp bulb and in the darkness replaced it. Flicking on the new bulb revealed his surroundings much clearer. He could see the piles of crushed rockcrete and twisted steel perfectly, as well as the horde of gangers surrounding him.

They shifted from foot to foot, holding their autoguns and knives in nervous fingers. Their eyes were hungry, ready to kill, and they were slowly moving closer. In a moment, they would spring.

Dimitri slammed his visor down.

The gangers charged.

Earlier

"These gangers are dangerous," Manker said. "They'll set off those charges, regardless of the harm it'll do to them. They're mindless."

"Is it Chaos?" Dimitri asked. "Perhaps corrupting their minds?

Manker shook his head. "No. It's Nephrine."

"You'll have to explain that one, Lieutenant."

"Nephrine's a drug," Jax put in over his shoulder. "Accelerates yer mental output but reduces yer cognitive capabilities."

Dimitri blinked. "Lieutenant?"

"He's right," Manker replied. "It's a common combat stimulant in these systems."

Dimitri had no idea how Jax knew that, and honestly didn't want to find out. There were some things about Jax that he had learned to just accept, like his swordsmanship, saintly good luck, and random examples of divine intelligence. Sometimes those things made him wonder if maybe Jax _was_ touched in some way.

"So we need someone to keep them from blowing the place before we evacuate," Dimitri said.

"Yes," Manker said. The lieutenant picked up his rifle. "My men will go."

Jax stepped over to them and looked down at the much tinnier officer. "Wrong. We're going. Get yer boys out of here, Manker. We'll take care of making sure them charges go boom."

Dimitri shook his head. "Forgive me, but balls to that."

Jax frowned. "That's an order."

"Damnit."

Later

Dimitri cut an arm off and put his fist through someone's skull. Bullets hammered off his armor, and despite its weakened condition, the plating held up. He stabbed a ganger in the chest twice, the Fang biting deep into the rib cage. Blood mixed with the dust that covered his suit, mixing into a gory mud.

A grenade detonated under him, knocking him off balance for a moment. In that time, ten gangers hit him full force and tackled him to the ground. Fingers grasped at the seal to his visor. Dimitri screamed and thrashed, cutting into everything around him with no rhyme, but he knew his life was measured in minutes.

When his visor opened, it was all over.

Salvation came from the sky. Through the darkness like a burning comet of faithful fire came the drop pod. It impacted ten meters from Dimitri's position, smoldering in the smoke.

The doors blew and Castarius charged onto the field, bolter and chainsword dealing death. With his assailants distracted, Dimitri was able to break free and assist his comrade in killing the rest of the gangers.

Thirty seconds later, both men stood on the summit of a dead pile forty thick. Dimitri spat in the dirt and was blinking to keep sweat from his eyes. Something was wrong with his leg servos, forcing him to push harder and strain himself.

Castarius was fine thanks to the benefits of an Astartes biology. No matter how more advanced his armor was, Dimitri had to respect the Space Marine body.

"My thanks for the help, Castarius," he said.

The Techmarine made a noncommittal grunt. "Where is the Battle Saint?"

"Not sure," Dimitri replied. "I haven't seen him since the charges blew."

Earlier

The main support struts for the turbine complex were in the most inconvenient of places: hanging precariously above three kilometer drop on a series of catwalks. It wasn't the best of places to have a firefight, and the way these gangers were chucking grenades, Dimitri wasn't sure what would take the place out first.

Jax was leading them, as was normal, and had cut himself off from the rest of the Dogs. He was on an entirely different catwalk, hacking and shooting his way through a platoon of the junkie bastards. Dimitri could hear his music from where he crouched near the entrance to the understructure.

"How long till we've cleared everything?" he shouted.

Animal Mother looked back at him. "Who knows? They just keep coming!"

"Hey, Dimitri, do you think we could start our own gang?" Jax asked.

Dimitri ignored him. "Sergeant, just keep working! They'll pull back eventually!"

Next to the charges, the Krieg demo teams were still holding position. Their resolve was incredible. Dimitri had never seen courage like this outside the ranks of the Astartes.

"But we can't hold!" shouted one of the Catachans. "We'll run out of ammo!"

Dimitri shot another ganger in the chest, grabbed the man, and threw him over the railing. "Then we'll bite their heads off if we have to! For the Emperor!"

That got a cheer out of even the dour Death Korpsmen, and Dimitri was feeling pretty good about himself when he saw the ganger that had slipped past them. The bastard had crawled under the catwalks and come up behind them.

Right by the charges.

Dimitri tried to shoot him, but was just a second to slow. The charges blew, knocking out the supports, and sending the entire complex pitching into the black along with the rest of the Dogs of War.

Later

"With the turbine offline things should get interesting in here," Dimitri said.

They were walking through the rubble, side by side, sweeping for targets.

"The pollution will start in the upper spires," Castarius replied. "Your human physique should only begin showing symptoms of poisoning in two hours."

"How quaint."

The two men walked on in silence for another five minutes before they finally spotted signs of Jax. Dimitri had been expecting something subtle, like a few warm shell casings or a few freshly dead gangers. Instead, they saw a makeshift fortress of hostiles under full siege by Jax and the remaining Death Korps.

"Well, that's surprising," Dimitri muttered. His visor locked onto Jax's signature and magnified the image to show the Confederate wading into the enemy, slashing and shooting his way up a ramp, lit only by the red flashes of lasgun volleys that supported him. "Now what?"

"Simple," Castarius replied. He tossed a bolter to Dimitri and hefted his own. "We charge! For the Emperor!"

Dimitri was still getting over holding a bolter when Castarius lunged toward the battle, chainsword revving. Taking a breath, Dimitri followed him in.

(' ')

Jax was pissed. A more refined warrior would have tried to hone this anger into a fine point, a mental spear with which to better focus on the fight, but not Jax. The Battle Saint let his anger fill him to the brim and let it out in a long, howling rebel yell as he cut into the opposition. His armor and Antigan genes put him high above the competition, allowing him to strike down on the drug-abusing gangers like an enraged god.

He screamed curses, thrashing right and left and knocking gangers off the ramp that led into the scrap metal fort. His Impaler chattered in his left fist, each buck of its rapid recoil taking another life.

A ganger in a forklift exosuit lumbered down the ramp carrying a smoke-belching drill, ready to take Jax in single combat. The Confederate sprayed the rest of his clip into its legs and made ready to charge it. Unfortunately, the suit then exploded under multiple detonations along its less-armored flank.

Dimitri strode up next to Jax a heartbeat later, bolter smoking and armored feet crushing bodies. "Thought you could use the help."

Jax glanced at him. "Dimitri. You see Animal yet?"

His equerry shook his head. "Found the rest of his team, though. They're dead."

"I reckon this is their stronghold." Jax gestured toward the fort, ignoring the autogun rounds that pinged from his armor. "We take it out, we end this."

Dimitri started to reply, but was drown out by the battle cry of Castarius as the Techmarine charged up into the fort, servo arms smacking aside the wounded and dying gangers that obstructed his path.

Dimitri looked back at Jax. "Follow him, then?"

Jax nodded. "Manker, move yer boys in after us! For our dead!"

The Kriegans roared, and Jax charged.

(' ')

Dimitri found himself struggling to keep up as Jax tore his way along the battlements, dismembering heavy weapons crews by the dozen and in one instance taking a big mutant ganger in hand-to-hand.

They cleared the outer wall first, killing the sentries before pounding the middle of the camp with suppressive fire. Jax launched a rocket into the center and tossed his Impaler to Dimitri.

"Keep the bastards pinned!" he shouted, whipping his chainsword into a ready stance. "I'll move in and take 'em out!"

As Jax moved down, Dimitri fired over his head, knocking out heavier targets from range while Jax whittled the hordes up close. The Krieg troopers flowed around him, picking up whatever scraps he left behind.

The gangers weren't fighting as hard, even by their standards. Knocking out the turbines was finally taking its toll. The pollution was doubling back down the hive and affecting the combatants in the lower levels. Dimitri wasn't worried. Between his filtration system and the Death Korps gas masks, they could operate for as long as it took.

(' ')

It only took ten more minutes. In that time, the gangers were all but dead, and the few that remained seemed more concerned with puking up their lungs than mounting a defense. The Confederate slowed his pace and simply walked through the camp, executing the collapsed gangers. One of the bastards detonated a grenade against Jax's shin guard, but the Battle Saint didn't even slow his pace.

Dimitri followed him to the center of the fort, where a massive warehouse squatted in a field of gravel and pipelines. Castarius was already prying the door off with his servos, and Jax stopped to wait for him.

"Betcha this is where they're keeping their drugs," he told Dimitri. "Gonna be a regular flophouse in there."

Dimitri had no idea what that meant, so he elected to keep quiet.

Castarius grunted and pulled the half-ton door of its hinges before tossing it aside. He looked back and shouted, "Clear!"

Jax, Dimitri, Manker and the Techmarine moved into the warehouse, shining their flashlights around at the crates that filled the space. Dimitri brushed aside a sheet of plas-wrap and read the shipping manifest aloud.

"Contents: two hundred bottles of combat nephrine. Shipped to: Ganglord Tyrius Pious. Shipped from: Office of Imperial Armed Forces, Ultima Segmentum…" he let the words hang.

Jax looked over at him, his face unreadable behind his visor. "You mean these guys were on a drug sent by the government?"

"Looks like," Dimitri replied. "Maybe it was some kind of experiment—"

"Impossible!" Castarius roared. "The Imperium does not harm its own! Mankind cannot turn on itself in such a way! This—" he smacked his fist on the crates, "—is a trick of Chaos! It must be!"

Dimitri laughed. "Castarius, I don't think Chaos alters shipping manifests."

"Then you are a fool!"

"Yeah, okay, calm the fuck down." Jax stepped up to one of the crates. "I don't know what this is, or why it's happened, but let's not jump to concluding things."

"Conclusions," Dimitri coughed.

Jax shrugged. "Whatever. There's a hundred reasons this could've happened, and none of 'em's our concern. We smash shit and other people pick up the tab, and that's exactly what we're gonna do here." He walked over to one of the Krieg troops and grabbed the lad's flamer. "Burn the whole damn thing."

Far Away, in the Ghoul Stars

Adamus marched out of the Thunderhawk, flanked by Drake and Omnios and followed by the lumbering form of Tharok. His boots sank into the bloodsand of the planet Frakastle. Mutant ant creatures in the soil instantly converged on his armor, trying to eat it out of some misguided primal instinct. In the distance Adamus could see the Castellum Mutanis, its great twisted spires reaching into the rust red sky like the wretched bones of a great skeletal hand.

Drake moved up beside him. "Nothing on auspex."

Adamus looked to Omnios. The sorcerer shook his head, electing a frown out of the War Captain.

So, the madman's sentries hid themselves from all detection, even psykers. An interesting development.

"If I might ask, why have we landed so far out?" Drake leaned in. "What is the benefit?"

"The benefit is for me to see and you to not concern yourself with," Adamus snapped. "Now be silent. Our host will meet us momentarily."

And so they waited. Seconds turned to minutes, and minutes morphed into an hour before contact was made.

The ground started to tremble, and Adamus drew Zeruel. Seeing their commander's actions, both Omnios and Drake pulled weapons, the former a chaos-tainted blade, the latter a corrupted blade encarmine. Omnios's arms morphed into twin cyclone missile launchers, his chest opened up into a row of autocannons, and a lascannon emerged from his mouth.

In front of the group, the crust of the planet buckled, snapped, and split wide with a groan of titans as something massive emerged from the ground. Scales of the deepest black and purples shimmered in the crimson light and the colossal mutant worm beached itself on the dunes.

Drake started forward, his jump pack flaring, but Adamus stopped him. "No, this is our host."

The former Sanguinary Guard began to question that statement when the monster's multi-segmented jaws unfurled and a man stepped out.

Resplendent in a suit of corrupted Astartes war plate, a cloak of human skin and an archaic torture device strapped to his back, the man known as Fabius Bile smiled upon his new guests. "Adamus, my friend, how are you?"

The War Captain slid his sword back into its sheath and grinned. "I am well, Fabius. Yourself?"

The former Emperor's Children Apothecary gestured to the creature behind him. "Still tinkering, as you can see. Now, why have you come here? I doubt your father would be pleased to know of this visit."

Adamus frowned. "He's not my father. Why must everyone make that mistake?"

"Nevermind that," Fabius said, pushing the issue aside. "I take it you need help of some sort."

Adamus stepped forward and leaned in, as if his next words were to be secret. "I need an army."

Fabius grinned, showing rows of yellowed, blood-stained fangs. "Then you have come to the right place."

_Hammer's Fall_, in orbit above Talaris II

Dimitri filled his helmet with water and dumped it on his head, letting the blood wash off of his face in runnels. The excess splashed across his armored chest and dripped down onto the tiled bathroom floor of the stateroom, where it ran along the cracks made by his footfalls.

When he felt as refreshed as he could be, he stepped back out into the living area, where all surviving members of the 426th Death Korps were convening. They numbered just at platoon strength, with Manker as their commanding officer, continuing the trend of only his platoon making it out. Unfortunately, they weren't the only ones to suffer heavy casualties.

Aside from Animal Mother, who now stood far outside the group, all the Catachans had died in the turbine complex collapse. The sergeant was still in shock, and Dimitri made a note to check on him in the coming weeks.

Jax stood in the middle of the room, giving a rundown on the Dogs of War mission statement, standard operating procedures, daily schedule, and command structure. As Dimitri watched, armor orientation was penciled in for later in the day. Dimitri made note of that on his tablet, and poured himself a glass of something that smelled like very strong alcohol.

Castarius entered halfway through the briefing and marched across to Dimitri.

"Equerry Vlasna, armor has been prepared for the neophytes, and all suits used by the Catachans have been recovered. I shall commence repairs later."

"Thank you, Castarius," Dimitri replied. The Techmarine started to walk away, but Dimitri stopped him. "Castarius, wait a second. I need to talk to you."

"Speak, if you must."

Dimitri sighed. "Look, thanks for everything on the surface. You were a real life-saver."

"Indeed. Without my assistance, you would be dead twelve times over."

The lack of humility was normal, but nonetheless surprising. "Yes, well, I believe I owe you an apology for when I doubted you on the surface. I still think it wasn't, um, _Chaos_, but I should not have brought it up so publicly."

Castarius stared at him.

"So, uh, sorry?"

Castarius turned on his heel and left the stateroom.

Dimitri sighed and downed his drink. As he was refilling, he muttered, "I don't think I'll ever understand that man."

"Dat's cuz da Beakies is real odd," Gort said as he waddled up beside Dimitri. "Know whut I'z sayin'?"

Dimitri blinked. "Gort, why didn't you come planetside? It's not like you to miss a fight that big."

The Humie Luva shrugged, said, "Eh, I hadda poop," and moved on.

In the middle of the room, Jax was still talking, but now the topic had moved on to lewd jokes about women, and Dimitri realized his closest friend for the next few hours was going to be this liquor cabinet.

Somehow, that didn't seem so bad.

**Author's Note: Okay, I'm back. I won't even give you an excuse for my absence, as I'm sure you don't want to hear it. Needless to say, I'm back to updating regularly, so expect more soon. I'll probably put the next one up on a Saturday, though. It's important to stick with that.  
**


	21. Chapter 21: The Rattiest Ratlings

"Midgets."

"Yup."

With Castarius and Animal Mother busy running the Kriegans through training exercises on the hot deck, and with the ship being restocked by the people of Talaris II, Jax and Dimitri were taking some time to meet with Captain Brigham to discuss their next course of action. Dimitri was in favor of recruiting more Dogs from Tripe's files. But Jax apparently had a better idea, one that Dimitri was having some trouble coming to terms with.

"Midgets," the equerry repeated. "As in tiny people."

Jax nodded. "Yeah, that's what the word means." He grabbed a handful of mixed nuts from a bowl sat out on the hololithic table and tossed them down his gullet. His next words were spoken between munches. "What's so weird about that?"

"Well, forgive me for not understanding the tactical applications of midgets in CMC armor."

"S'okay," Jax replied. "I got thrown for a loop myself when I first thought it up. But think about how many small places they could get into!"

"Uh-huh."

"And the way Castarius talks, the shorter the person, the more effective the armor'd be at protecting them."

"How—"

"See, if somethin' smacks into an armored midget, the force isn't dispersed over as large an area. Instead, it compounds the force enough so we can shake the hits right off! Perfect for close combat!"

Brigham took a drink of his recaf and looked at Jax. "Forgive me, but I've been a shipmaster for a long time, and never in all the battle's that I've witnessed have I seen physics work like that."

Jax stopped chewing. "Yeah, but I'm a _saint_."

"Fair point." Brigham spun around to the rest of the bridge. "Higgins! Alert the navigators; lay in a course for Skavaria as soon as possible, and hurry up the re-supply operation!"

Dimitri stood up. "Okay, hang on. What's in Skavaria?"

"It's an abhuman world. Ratlings, mostly. Skavarian ratlings are particularly ferocious, or so I've heard." Brigham beamed at Jax. "Figured those would be best for your purposes."

Jax patted the Captain on the shoulder. "Reckon they will be." He started off toward the exit. "Come on, Dimitri! We've gotta go make preparations to get the rattiest ratlings!"

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 21: The Rattiest Ratlings_

When they were out on the thruway, moving back toward the hot deck, Dimitri stepped in front of Jax. Both men were in their armor, so confronting the Confederate wasn't as strange as if he had been unarmored, but to an onlooker, the image was still ridiculous.

Jax was just so damn tall…

"What the hell are you thinking?" he started. "Ratlings, Jax? You want to throw the recommendations of the top inquisitional minds out the airlock for Throne-damned _ratlings_?"

"Yup. Civilians if we can get 'em."

"You'll have to explain that, Jax."

Jax looked down at him. "You mean, like, with somethin' different than the whole 'tiny kicks ass' thing?"

"Yes."

"Fine. I need soldiers I can train. These regular Imperials we been getting just don't do the trick. Hard to fill a cup that's already done been filled." He leaned back against the railing. "Hell, I spent an hour this mornin' arguing with Manker over how his boys were _praying_ to the damn guns while they loaded them."

"That's to appease the weapon's machine spirit," Dimitri corrected.

"It's a waste of fucking time's what it is. Think a damn ork's gonna wait while ya pray?" He made a finger gun and popped Dimitri in the forehead.  
"Nope, he's gonna blow your damn brains out and eat yer babies for supper."

Dimitri nodded. "Okay, Jax, I see your point."

"Thanks."

They rode on in silence for a moment before Dimitri broke in. "And I think Gort might find that baby eating thing to be a bit stereotypical."

"Nah, he don't listen to music."

Far Away

Sandalphon nursed his hatred in silence. In low orbit above the domain of Fabius Bile, he forced himself to remain still as shuttle after shuttle of vile experiments were shoved into his holds, where they were allowed to brawl and murder at their leisure, playing with the scrap armaments fed to them by their Black Legion guards.

Master Adamus didn't seem very worried about these beastmen, yet another fact that irked Sandalphon's immortal sensibilities. True, the warband was low on manpower, but the idea that the War Captain would even tolerate this—let alone encourage it—was still an affront to Sandalphon's honor.

Yet he stayed silent, and added it to Adamus's steadily growing tab of deeds he would be held accountable for one day.

The door to the bridge slid open and Adamus marched in, towing a pleading slave by the hair. He walked to the center and kicked open a circular hatch in the floor. Below, a fleshy gorget of teeth and muscle spiraled off into the abyss. The War Captain kicked the slave inside and let her be devoured by Sandalphon's crushing bite.

As her body came apart in his throat and her blood drained down into his stomach, Sandalphon's anger ebbed just a bit. Maybe Adamus wasn't so bad…

"Sandalphon," Adamus said, sitting on his throne. "How's my favorite demonically possessed strike cruiser today?"

"I am ready to kill, lord."

Adamus nodded. "I hoped you would say that."

Sandalphon grew excited. "Why, lord?"

"Just the usual: raiding, mass-rape and genocide." Adamus leaned forward. "Bile has given us all we need. Now, get us to the planet Conventia in the Ultima Segmentum. We have a monastery to destroy."

Skavaria, One Week Later

Dawn was breaking over the red-roofs of the town of Lavainia when the offworlders made landfall. They came en masse, appearing at the perimeter of town as suddenly as a quick breeze, the harsh flash-crack of their passage echoing across the surrounding valley.

At once, alarms in the town went off, wailing through the streets. The chapel bell rang out, and all the men ran to the trenches at the edge of town with their rifles.

Out on the field, Dimitri was just beginning to come out of his teleportation daze when the first bullets smacked into their line. They were low-caliber hunting rounds, and even if they had hit the weakest points on the Dogs' armor, they hadn't a hope in hell of penetrating. Still, the suddenness of it was enough to startle him.

Or, in the case of the Kriegans, to evoke a violent response.

Sergeants called their men to arms and Impalers whipped up. Target locks sounded across the trans-com, and firing orders were being given. Without so much as a word from Jax, the unit was ready to demolish the entire town and kill everyone within it.

Dimitri wouldn't stand for it, and activated his commlink. "Everybody, stand down and hold your fire! Nobody fires until we give the order!"

The Death Korps guys responded instantly, snapping their rifles down and slinging them without protest. Gort, however, didn't stop as quickly, and Jax had to convince him with a round in the leg. The Humie Luva didn't complain about it, and let his physiology start to heal the wound.

Jax stepped up beyond their perimeter, letting the fusillade smack off his armor. In the morning light, his white suit contrasting with the darker tones of the rest of the Dogs, he looked every pound of his saintly self.

"Put yer guns away, ya stupid bastards! We're Imperials!"

The firing stopped immediately, and Dimitri stepped up alongside Jax, cranking his external speakers to full. It was time to do his job.

Later

Four hours, two sermons, eighteen outrunners and a few village-wide toasts later and Jax was practically family with the entire planet. Feudal ratling culture dictated that all the kingdom counts meet with the offworld saint, and by late evening, the continent's royalty was flocking into the fields outside Lavainia where the Dogs had set up their ground base.

They came on their best mounts—lizard-like creatures called Clawacks—and flying their best colors. Dimitri and Jax had a hard laugh at the sight of the ratling kings, their chubby little forms all resplendent in expensive furs. The Confederate's chuckles continued all through his meetings with the counts, though if they took offense to it, none was shown.

It wasn't until the last meeting that they encountered a hiccup. The ratling entered the tent in no robes, but instead the trappings of a hunter, and looked up at Jax with familiarity in his eyes.

"You!" he snarled. "Why are _you_ here?"

Dimitri looked up from his dataslate and did a double take. "Menshaw? Is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me," replied the little man. "And what the hell are you doing here? Couldn't you idiots have died on Dancer?"

Jax's eyebrows went up. "Oh! You're the little guy I kicked into the crates! I remember you!"

Menshaw hissed at him. "Yeah, my spine remembers you too, gakface."

Dimitri flicked the safety off on his rifle. Not that he was worried about this little puke hurting either of them. The gesture was more to shut Menshaw's face than a prelude to killing him.

It didn't work.

"I scav my way all the way back home from that warzone and what do I get? The two of you show up to ruin everything." He sat down in the dirt. "Why'd dad have to get sick today?"

Jax leaned forward on the ammo crate he was perched on. "Yer dad's one of these kings?"

"Counts," Dimitri corrected.

Menshaw nodded. "One of the most powerful, not that you give a rotten poo."

That's when they lost Jax to a fit of laughter. Dimitri rolled his eyes and squatted down next to the ratling.

"So, you're a prince, then?" he asked.

"Yeah, what's it to you?"

Dimitri stood and walked away. "Not much, really. Just that we're starting a task force and need some recruits. Nothing you'd be interested in, though. Lots of fighting for glory and whatnot."

Menshaw snorted. "Glory? Bah."

"And honor. A whole lot of honor."

Menshaw hopped up and turned to leave.

Dimitri stretched. "Plus, the pay's a couple thousand thrones a month."

Menshaw stopped dead in his tracks, his stubby ears wriggling at the words. He looked back over his shoulder. "How much?"

"Only a couple thousand. Not much, considering your royalty status." Dimitri didn't even look at Menshaw as he led the poor guy on. Next to him, Jax was hiding his laughter behind an armored hand. "We really need a full count, to be honest. One that's got a penchant for glory and about a hundred men with heroic attitudes."

"Oh, I've got plenty of that!" Menshaw said, gesturing expansively. "I am a knight, after all."

Dimitri gave the ratling his best derisive glance. "Oh? Knights wear fingerless cloth gloves now?"

Jax picked up for him. "C'mon, Dimitri. Maybe the little feller's more'n he looks." He stood and walked over to Menshaw, reaching very far down to place his hand on the ratling's capped head. "You say you got a bunch of men?"

Menshaw tried to nod, but the neo-steel resistance stunted the motion. "Uh, absolutely! I've got enough men to launch a full crusade!"

"Well, we only need about a hundred."

"I've got a hundred men ready to fight!" Menshaw chirped. "Can I have a shot, lord?"

Jax made an over-exaggerated pondering face and held it for a full thirty seconds before nodding. "One shot, Sir Menshaw. Get me yer best men."

"Oh, absolutely, lord!" Menshaw said as he scurried from the tent. "I'll get the absolute best men ever, and you won't be disappointed! They're a real class lot, these boys! You'll be real impressed, honest!"

As Menshaw stumbled out of sight, Jax and Dimitri both broke down laughing.

"Throne, that was ridiculous," Dimitri muttered.

"Yeah, but he's our best shot."

"How do you figure?"

Jax walked back to his ammo crate throne and sat down. "Know how I wanted guys I could train?"

"Yeah. Clean slates, right?"

"Exactly," Jax replied. "Menshaw's buddies are gonna be the lowest ratlings there've ever been; I'm talkin' thieves and criminals, guys who've seen the scariest things inside themselves and come out hard as nails. Those're the guys we need, Dimitri, 'cause when a man knows his own dark self, there ain't a thing that can scare him."

Dimitri scrolled down on his dataslate, found the bullet point labeled 'find ratling team', and marked it as complete.

Later

It was four feet tall. The servos were condensed in the legs and arms, and all the neo-steel plates that had been removed to give it its shortened stature had been reattached in the shoulders and chest, giving it an overall rounder, pudgier appearance that along with the bulbous helmet made it almost completely round.

Castarius called it the CMC-400 Abhuman Variant Mk. 1.

Jax called it the Midget Ball, then pulled the saint card on Castarius's designation.

One hundred full suits had been converted to Midget Balls, and all were now waiting on the mustering fields outside Lavairia, attached to charging generators and tended to by a team of servitors.

Jax stood above them all, watching as each of Menshaw's ratlings were assigned to their own suit. One by one they were activating, then going through the stages of stumble-fall-crawl-stumble that all new users experienced. Target practice came next, then a briefing by the big man himself.

Dimitri watched Jax give the walkthrough. He had figured that after so many times hearing it, he would have been bored this time through. The distraction of watching the pint-sized audience squabbling with each other convinced him otherwise.

It also bothered him to the point where he stopped Jax after the meeting and before the Confederate could join his new recruits on a shuttle.

"Hey, Dimitri! Watcha think?"

"I think you're completely out of your mind!" Dimitri hissed. "Did you see them fighting each other? I'm amazed none of them opened fire!" Jax gave him his 'c'mon Dimitri' look, but the equerry would have none of it. "Explain to me right now, here, how this is going to work, because after that I just don't see it."

Jax set his hand on Dimitri's shoulder. "There," he said.

"Jax, are you trying to make a saintly gesture to sway my opinions?"

"Maybe. Depends on if it's workin'."

"It isn't."

"Oh, well, then I guess you'll just have to trust me."

Dimitri had started to respond when he noticed his hands were starting to glow. Static built up around him, and he felt himself dematerializing. He sighed.

"Emperor take that damn teleporter…"

There was a flash, a crack, and they were back on the ship. Jax helped him to his feet and kept on talking as if nothing had happened.

"Listen, Dimitri, we were wasting too much time getting men, and with these new guys, I think we got a really good team." Jax pulled him out into the hallway. "Now cheer up and stop puking, 'cause tomorrow we start the first day of saving the galaxy."

**Author's Note: Okay, okay, okay, I promise the ratlings won't steamroll Space Marines. Good? Good.**

**I really just needed to finish up assembling the Dogs, and I thought that having something interesting in their roster might be a nice change of pace. There will still be more additions to the command squad-meaning Jax, Dimitri, Animal, Castarius and Gort-but the main force is pretty much taken care of. Now we can get on to saving the galaxy and resolving some of those character mysteries that have been ignored up until now. Mainly what Chapter Castarius is from.**

**Oh, yes, Animal Mother is a reference. His name, Jayne Casey, is a combination of two Adam Baldwin characters and his nickname is a third; the hyped-up machinegunner from Full Metal Jacket. I was surprised everyone caught that.**

**Next chapter is the beginning of a three-part arc entitled We'll Be Back. If you've played tabletop, you should know the bad guy.**

**Till next week, later.  
**


	22. Chapter 22: We'll Be Back Part I

Dimitri slammed his fist into the bulkhead, forcing his hand tighter into the glove, and powered up the limb. He wiggled his fingers and clenched them into a fist, getting a green-light on his armor check. Good, now he could fight.

Grabbing his Impaler, he marched out onto the hot deck as the commlink crackled to life, resolving into the voice of Captain Brigham.

"We're coming around hard and taking ground fire. There's no time to stabilize, so best of luck hitting it the old fashioned way. Sorry, Vlasna, no teleporting today."

"You won't hear me complaining, Captain," he replied. The hot deck was filled with movement. Dogs shuffled into Valkyries, sorted one squad to each gunship to minimize casualties, and the entire bay was alive with the sound of servos and shouting. "What's our ETA?"

"Two minutes." The ship shuddered under another megaton-yield impact. "If we can hold it together that long against this thing's guns."

"You can, Captain. The saint believes in you," Dimitri replied. "Vlasna, out."

Jax hopped down from a crate and landed next to Dimitri. "Hey, what's the word? We still meeting those guys planetside?"

"Yeah," Dimitri replied, immediately understand what 'guys' Jax was referring to. The Confederate had refused to pronounce their actual name since he'd been given the news, and his demeanor toward meeting them was still sour. "We need to go now, though. Window's closing fast."

"Roger that," Jax replied. "Let's boogie!"

Together, they ran up the gangway into the last available Valkyrie. The craft sealed, the airlock blew, and they blasted into space.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 22: We'll Be Back: Part I_

Operation: Take it Back, the code under which the Dogs of War now operated, was founded with one objective in mind. As Jax put it, it was 'to save the world and everybody in it'. Dimitri, who was actually responsible for writing the operation's handbook, had translated that to the mission statement 'to bring the God-Emperor's salvation to all who require it'.

The simple matter was that the galaxy was being overrun by non-human influences. Aliens had grip on too many worlds, and what they didn't kill, Chaos corrupted from within, not to mention the countless worlds besieged by rebellious elements of humanity. The roster was full and the Dogs of War were only a few hundred men. Saving the galaxy was a tall order, and some guidelines had to be established for how to tackle it.

After much discussion amongst the command council—Jax, Dimitri, Castarius, Menshaw, Manker and Brigham—it was decided that the Dogs should operate under three restrictions.

First: they would only take on matters classed as planet-threatening. If it couldn't kill a world, it wasn't worthy of their time.

Second: campaigns would be picked from a list of options that fit the first tenet's criteria by the command council. The determination had to be unanimous, though Jax was given two vetoes on account of his saintliness.

Third: each campaign would have a time limit, to be determined before the first ships launched by the command council. At this predetermined time, the Dogs would pull out no matter what, unless an extension was voted to be unanimous.

These tenets were sworn upon by all involved in their creation, and would ensure that Take it Back's ultimate goal could be achieved.

The testing ground for these newly formed Dogs of War was the planet Kletharka in the northern Ultima Segmentum. Operational time limit was seventy-two hours.

The Command Valkyrie

Anti-orbital fire rocked the craft, but Castarius steadied it before a total loss of control could take hold. Linked as he was into the Valkyrie's transcom vox system, he was able to pilot all of the Dogs' craft dropping to the surface. With his mind fragmented into separate subroutines over all the dropships, Castarius was able to see the landing zone from a hundred perspectives, all of which showed him the same thing: the planet was rejecting them.

The entirety of his view was filled with arcing strikes of green lightning, stretching up into the cosmos to strike down the Dogs' ships before they could make landfall. Backlit by the rapidly blackening surface of the world, the green streaks were easily identifiable and avoided. Still, mentally running evasion commands through a fleet of Valkyries was taxing, even on a mind such as his.

Castarius rolled the command craft to the side, avoiding a blast of fire, and compensated for the movement with every other ship around it. The entire landing formation shifted out of reaction, and each movement flooded into his mind as another stream of code. Castarius closed his eyes.

Yes, this was _very_ taxing.

(' ')

Dimitri stood in the middle of the troop compartment, hanging onto an overhead grab bar with one hand. He moved with each jerk of Castarius's control, and his boots were already covered with Gort's vomit, but he didn't mind. At least he wasn't being teleported.

Next to him, Jax was locked into a wall restraint, eyes closed, muttering to himself. Seeing this, Dimitri leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder with the barrel of his rifle.

"Jax, are you actually praying?"

The Confederate's eyes opened and he glared at Dimitri. "No, I'm just cussing you out for picking this damn planet."

"We all picked it," Dimitri replied. "And if it makes you feel any better, I'm not happy with your choice of soldiers."

"The ratling thing?"

"Yes, Jax, the ratling thing."

"I've trained them!"

"You threw them at walls."

"And they bounced off, didn't they?"

Dimitri looked away. "I'm not even sure how to respond to that."

The Valkyrie lurched again, the motion accompanied by a groan of stressed steel as they finally punched through the hot layer and into real sky. When they began to stabilize, Jax spoke up again.

"Tell you what: I'm gonna show you how good an idea this is. This here war'll be my midget proving ground."

Dimitri laughed. "Yeah, I'm sure you will."

"I'm beginning to think yer doubtin' me."

Dimitri looked over at Jax. "Throne, you're being serious? Of course I doubt you, Jax. That's my job."

Castarius's voice drifted over the commlink. "Synchronized touchdown in thirty seconds."

Jax stood up. "I mean it, Dimitri. This is a good idea."

"Prove it."

Thirty Seconds Later

Contrary to Castarius's word, the landing was not entirely synchronized, with the Valkyries carrying the ratling squads of second company hitting dirt before any of the others. The CO dropship hit the absolute quickest, its ramp dropping seconds before any of the other landers touched down.

Lieutenant Grumbel Menshaw ran down the ramp ahead of his troops, and his waddling, asymmetrical gait marked the first Dogs of War steps on Kletharka.

His stubby boots sank into the ashen ground, and Menshaw looked up to see the depressing landscape in which they had landed. Black ash covered the entire world, forming a vast stretch of rolling dunes that seemed the only defining feature. There were no landmarks in sight, and though he had expected it, the sight still bothered him.

The fact that the sky was filled by storm clouds made green by the constant anti-orbital fire of the aliens didn't help.

He pushed the thoughts aside and waved his men down after him. After all, he wasn't being paid that much money to have a depressing introspective moment.

Kriegan Landing Zone

Lieutenant Harken Manker couldn't care less about the look of the landscape, and didn't find it in the least bit unnerving. He was the native of a planet covered in radioactive waste, where the population wore gas masks from the time they could walk and birthed their children in sterile iron lungs from synthetic reproductive banks, meaning that no one truly had a father or a mother, and therefore the existence of their soul was even up to interpretation.

So if Harken Manker found it hard to care about a spooky-looking battlefield, it wasn't his fault.

His men moved without needing instruction, their tall, broad forms striding over the ash wastes, rifles panning for targets. The first group of hostiles found them one minute after landing.

Command Landing Zone

Dimitri heard the snap-flash of xenos weapons fire seconds before Manker's call over the commlink.

"First company under fire. Exchanging hostilities now. Requesting backup."

Jax jumped on a heartbeat later. "All units: move to first company's position."

Dimitri looked back at the command squad. "We move now. Animal, you take point."

The big Catachan didn't respond, but merely took his place at the front as the squad began to move east toward Manker's position. Dimitri fell in after him, wondering if the conversation he'd had with the man had even done anything.

Three Days Ago

The man called Animal Mother stood in the hot deck armory, blindfolded, his hands moving across the partially disassembled form of a C14 Impaler. The housing popped at his touch, then out came the barrel, trigger assembly, bolt, feeding chamber, and inhibitor chip. The task was simple, repetitive, and altogether easy.

But more importantly, it was all-consuming. It kept Animal's mind off of what he now dwelt on for every other moment of his life, and lulled him into a relaxed, almost comatose state.

When the weapon was fully stripped, he cobbled it back together in the perfect reverse of his previous actions, and in less than forty seconds. The process completed, he held the rifle up and racked the bolt with a satisfying clack-clack. Animal pulled his blindfold off and laid the rifle down just as the door to the armory slid open.

Dimitri walked in, his armor humming, with all servos in perfect alignment. If Animal didn't know any better, he would have sworn the equerry hadn't fallen down the height of a hive and landed amidst the torn wreckage of his dead comrades.

"Sergeant," Dimitri greeted, extending his hand. "How are things?"

Animal shook with the man. "Fine," he lied, and went back to work on the guns.

Dimitri crossed his arms. "No, they're not."

"Is there a problem?" Animal asked, trying to play dumb.

"That depends on you." Vlasna leaned up against the stripping table. "I know how you feel, Casey."

Animal started pulling apart a flak pistol. "No, you don't."

"I think I do. On Dancer, I lost my entire company in one fight with the orks. I was the only survivor of that battle." Dimitri took a breath. "It was hard, but I got over it, and so can you."

Animal stared at the gun in his hands. "You were in charge of those men, then?"

Dimitri didn't respond.

"I'll take that as a no." Animal looked up at the equerry. "Until you lose men, too, you do not get to talk to me as an equal."

He went back to his work and when Dimitri left, he didn't even notice.

First Company's Location, Now

Jax had been in this universe for almost half of a year. As of yet, he hadn't found anything that could easily stand up to CMC armor, and therefore, felt somewhat justified in feeling unstoppable.

Of course, now that he had seen a necron vaporize one of Manker's Dogs with one shot, he began to rethink his invulnerability.

"Spread out!" he shouted, "Spread out and take 'em down!"

The necron warriors moved with slow, deliberate movements, their deadly weapons spitting arcs of green lightning as they crossed the dunes. The Dogs dug in to avoid the incoming, and as Dimitri watched, Manker's men were pulling combat shields from the Valkyries.

The Death Korps stood toe-to-toe with the xenos automatons, trading fire flush with the opposition. Spikes pounded the alien metal, drawing sparks and thick, mossy coolant, and after enough fire, the aliens did go down. The shields were holding against the gauss weaponry, but given time, the necrons would win out.

Jax dropped a clip from his rifle and reloaded as he barked orders. "Menshaw! Get yer midget ass over here!"

Dimitri's visor highlighted the incoming ratlings as they moved across the dunes, waddling to compensate for the cumbersome size of their rifles. Menshaw was in the lead, practically rolling down the slope in his bulbous armor.

Dimitri sighed. Throne, but this was ridiculous…

A gauss arc blasted into the dirt next to his foot and drew his attention back to the fight. The command squad was positioned up on a rise, cut off from Manker's men by a legion of necrons. Thankfully for the Kriegans, some of the heat was being drawn toward Jax, thanks to the Confederate's rising kill count and fiery oratory.

Unfortunately, that put Dimitri smack in the middle of another near-death experience, and forced him to fight his way out of it.

He tracked the shot back to the necron warrior responsible and put a full clip into its chest. The robot jerked, bleeding sparks of unholy electrical fire, and collapsed in the ash, its innards turned to scrap.

"Okay," Dimitri assured himself. "There. Dead."

As he was reloading, the dead necron climbed back to its feet, despite its mangled state, and picked its weapon back up. Dimitri watched it in stunned silence.

"What the hell!" Jax shouted. "That thing's dead! What the fuck?"

Menshaw took care of it. Like a bat out of hell, the little man hurled himself down the dune and tackled the necron headfirst. He pulled the necron's head off with a grunt and tossed the useless body into its fellows. Flayer blasts kicked up the ash around Menshaw as he scrambled back. He fired as he went, the recoil doing more to push him up the dune than his legs.

"Ratdogs, to me!" he squealed.

The rest of the half-pint soldiers charged over the dune after their leader and cut into the necrons. They laid out the spikes as well as any full-sized soldier and felled twice their weight in undead xenos.

As they killed, Jax looked across at Dimitri, open visor revealing his smirk. "Do you still doubt my tactics?"

Dimitri shook his head and went back to fighting, adding his own fire to the fray and not giving Jax the satisfaction of a retort.

(' ')

An hour later and they were doing rounds on the battlefield, sweeping the dead necrons to make damn sure they stayed dead. Menshaw's Ratdogs did the best work, disemboweling and decapitating the robots with a feral fervor Dimitri hadn't expected from them. It was as if they were trying to burrow into the necrons more than kill them. It was unnerving.

Lieutenant Manker's Death Korps held the three hundred yard perimeter that marked out the Dogs' territory, standing guard with their shields and rifles.

The combat shields were something Jax had Castarius work up out of layers of ceramite heated and cooled in the _Hammer's Fall_'s reactor chamber. The Techmarine rated them stable enough to hold against sustained flayer fire for two minutes. After that, though, the plates would begin to melt and turn to slag. In the previous firefight alone, almost every Kriegan had gone through a shield and were now onto their second.

Dimitri made a note to get more from orbit. They were worth it, but a constant supply would be needed.

"Okay," Jax said, walking up the dune with a necron head in his hand. "I figure we're about done here."

Dimitri pointed at the head. "Why do you have that?"

"Glad ya asked." Jax held up the head, his thumb wedged under its slack jaw. "This here's my intel guy, Dimitri. He's gonna tell us all the secrets of the evil necrons."

Jax's thumb fluttered and the head began to speak. "That is right, Mr. Saint, sir," it said in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Jax's imitation of a robot. "I am guilty of traitorism against my own race, because I am a filthy necron woman."

"Right. And what is your name?"

"Traitor McBitchwhore."

Dimitri nodded. "Okay, Traitor McBitchwhore, what should we do, in your scheming opinion?"

Jax tilted the necron head toward the north. "You should march that way and meet up with your friends."

"Good suggestion," Dimitri said. "It's almost like you're actually a puppet controlled by my commanding officer."

Traitor McBitchwhore fell to the dirt and Jax glared at Dimitri. "You just hate fun, don't you?"

"I played along!"

Jax walked off down the dune. "Whatever. Dogs, form up! We move!"

**Author's Note: That's the first part of this mini-series-within-a-series. Hope you like it, as it's the first real operation for the Dogs. Obviously it isn't as big of a walk in the park as the rest of the series has been and from here on out, nothing will be. The Dogs are meant to fight the toughest threats the galaxy can throw at them. This is just a taste of what's coming up next.**

**And on another note, this story is about to hit 200 reviews. So at the risk of sounding like a conceited ass, I'd like to thank everyone who's read this far for your support. I hope you continue to enjoy it in the future, and if you have any concerns, suggestions, criticisms or praise, be sure to PM or review. I really appreciate your input.**

**Till next week, then.  
**


	23. Chapter 23: We'll Be Back Part II

The Dogs marched across the ash wastes in a tapered formation. A mixed platoon of Kriegans and Ratdogs walked point, led by Menshaw and followed by the rest of the unit in a spread order that stretched nearly a half-mile across at its widest point. At the heart of the mob was the command squad, serving as the ambling axis around which the entire orchestration rotated.

They had been marching like this for two hours, and with the exception of sit reps every twelve minutes, no words had been exchanged until Jax finally broke the silence.

"We need transports," he muttered.

Though the march wasn't taking a toll on anyone, Dimitri still agreed. Walking was slow and the act of constantly looking for mines and traps was mentally taxing to the point of painful.

Still, though…

"Valkyries aren't available," he said. "Too much anti-air in the area."

"I meant ground transport."

"Oh? I thought you didn't believe in ground transport."

Jax popped his visor and glared at his equerry. "Maybe it's rubbed off on me, alright?"

"Fine." Dimitri held his hands up in mock surrender. "I won't press you."

"We'ez need a buggy," Gort translated to ork-speak. "So's ta go fasta."

Jax nodded. "True that."

Dimitri rolled his eyes and scanned the horizon again. Where was this damn tower, anyway?

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 23: We'll Be Back: Part II_

As decided before planetfall, the Dogs' first objective would be a necron anti-orbital 'ship killer' gauss spike. It was only a few miles from their landing zone, and its removal was essential if the space battle was to be won. Only eight of the spikes existed on the entire continent, and with them still in place, combat drops would be suicidal.

As it stood, the legions of guardsman about to deploy would be forced to land on the southern continent and march north, prolonging the conflict by months and giving the necrons time to dig in.

Jax wouldn't stand for that, so they moved out to find and fall each of the spikes. It was to be the Dogs' first live combat test, and their greatest contribution to the reclamation of Kletharka.

So when they finally arrived only to see someone else had beaten them too it, the blood in Jax's veins started to rise.

Dimitri caught on first—not only by Jax's sudden silence and flushed face, but also because of the way he gripped his Impaler's trigger handle until it broke—and stepped up to head off his aggression.

"Jax," he started, climbing in front of the Confederate. "You don't want to do this. We knew they would be here, so let's just play along."

Jax ran forward and Dimitri caught him. Even after just two steps, it took everything Dimitri had to stop the Battle Saint's forward momentum. Throne, but he was like a freight train.

"Jax, stop it!" he shouted. "They're our friends!"

The Confederate pointed past Dimitri in an accusing way. "Those ain't my friends! I told you: I ain't no Smurf's friend."

Down at the foot of the hill, a hundred helmeted heads turned to look at their little spat. The Ultramarines had noticed them.

(' ')

Veteran Sergeant Nigel Gagarin watched the figures upon the hill. Their equipment was strange, and by the looks of it they were fielding some kind of abhuman warrior breed in oddly round armor. Gagarin instantly recognized the group, and turned to his right.

"Honored Sicarius, I believe the Battle Saint is here."

Cato Sicarius, First Captain of the Watch and leader of the Ultramarine's Second Company, turned from where he was examining the destroyed necron gauss spike. He was a tall man, easily the match of any Ultramarine present, and wore armor draped with honor rolls.

He eyed the new arrivals as Gagarin had. "So it is," he muttered. "Maybe they do not approve of our taking their objective."

"They have no transport," Gagarin mentioned. "It's no wonder we got here first."

Sicarius looked at him. "You sound as if that made this less fair, old friend. But it is fair. As great Gulliman once said, the mettle of a man is measured not only in physical might, but in mental fortitude and preparation. Had these half-wits been prepared, they would have brought their own transportation, like us."

Gagarin nodded. "Absolutely."

The Captain smiled. "We have time in our campaign table. What do you say we go talk to these 'Dogs of War?'"

(' ')

Dimitri saw the two Ultramarines walking up the dune and looked to Jax. "Okay, listen: two of them are coming. These are going to be the commanders, so you've got to be on your game."

"Where's Castarius?" Jax asked, looking around. "We need an Assturd to talk to the Assturds."

Dimitri didn't disagree, but when he checked around, the Techmarine wasn't in sight. Instead, he found Animal Mother. "Animal, go find Castarius."

As the Catachan trotted off through the lines, Dimitri kept talking to Jax. "All you need to do is stall them. Keep them talking and maybe get them to like you until Castarius gets back. They already know what you are, offer them some religious advice. In fact, say the daily prayer with them. That'd work."

Jax wasn't looking at him. Instead, the Confederate had his visor down. Dimitri checked the commlink and realized a priority channel was open between Jax and Menshaw.

Unable to break the encryption, Dimitri started down the dune to head off the Astartes.

"Greetings, noble Astartes," he started. "I am Dimitri Vlasna, Equerry to the Battle Saint—"

"Yes, yes, we know of you," said the Veteran Sergeant. "You wrote the galactic astropathic announcement."

Dimitri blinked. He didn't know of any announcement, and was sure he would have remembered writing something with that important a title. Though the news bothered him, his mouth came up with the correct reply.

"I am honored, lord."

"Where is he?" asked the Captain. He pointed an armored digit up the dune. "Is he that one there? The massive one in white?"

Dimitri finally realized who the man was: Cato Sicarius, First Regent of Ultramar. Which meant that this group of Ultramarines was of the Second Company. Veterans of the Black Reach war. He was in the presence of greatness yet again, and yet again he was speechless.

The Sergeant was not. "Mortal, the Brother Captain asked you a question."

"Yes," Dimitri's mouth went on without him. "That is him."

Sicarius nodded, muttering something about size, and continued up the dune, Veteran Sergeant in tow.

Seeing them go knocked Dimitri into action and he hurried after them, ready to head off a fight if it came to it. And where the hell was Castarius?

(' ')

"What are you doing?"

Castarius looked up from his bolter. Lieutenant Manker was standing next to him, Impaler at his side. Even with his visor retracted, Manker's face was unreadable, due in no small part to the unnecessary gas mask he wore beneath it. Most of the first company Death Korps guys still wore them, more out of habit than anything else. Jax had ordered a restructuring of the masks to allow for more eyesight in the helmets, figuring it better to accommodate the men rather than mandate the masks come off.

The customization was on Castarius's to-do list, of course, right under the other eight thousand things he dealt with on a daily basis learning more about the armor he was sworn to maintain. So far he knew enough to make the ratling company a reality, but there was still much to learn.

However, none of these things were bothering him.

"I am staying out of the way," he answered Manker. "I am not needed here."

The lieutenant shook his head. "Wrong. The Battle Saint is talking to your kind. Go and help."

He might have said something else, as well, but Castarius paid him no mind. "They are not my kind," he growled. "I have no kind anymore. I am I and that is all. I have no brothers and never will, and if I did they would not be Ultramarines!"

With that, he stood and marched away, servo-arms disassembling the gun as he walked, leaving Manker to watch over his company.

(' ')

Though he would never voice it aloud, Sergeant Gagarin saw Marneus Calgar when he looked at Jax. The Battle Saint was heroic-looking, packed a mean punch and sophisticated armor, and was easily as strong as the Chapter Master. Each movement he made was deliberate and accentuated by the noise of his servos, and the presence of his height was only matched by his breadth.

Despite all this, Sicarius strode right to him and looked into the other man's eyes. "You are the so-called Battle Saint?"

The words were loaded, and hearing them made Gagarin cringe. Sicarius had forever been an arrogant snob, but in the past he had always had reason to be. In most situations, Sicarius was the best, be it at swordsmanship, marksmanship, or leadership. He always had the upper hand.

Here, Gagarin wasn't sure he did.

The Battle Saint's mask peeled back, revealing a square-jawed bald face so near Astartes it wasn't funny. "Yeah, I am, so step off before I open a whole can of holy whoop-ass in yer smurf face."

"I should hardly think that a threat," Sicarius replied. "After all, your Dogs of War do not seem all that threatening. You failed to even destroy this one target."

"Well, ya got here first."

The Captain smiled. "Precisely. Speed is necessary for the success of any mission. Our father, Robute Guilliman, wrote those exact words. Though I do not expect you to have heard of his works."

"Listen, Assturd, I'm warnin' ya—"

Sicarius pulled his sword. In all the galaxy and in all the centuries that Gagarin had fought alongside him, never had he witnessed a being move faster than Sicarius did on his draw swing, until now.

The power sword sprang out of the sheath in a glittering arc, most likely to illustrate Sicarius's point with an impressive sweep. Instead, it ended up snagged in the Battle Saint's grip.

Sicarius blinked. "How did you—?"

Jax turned the blade aside, the white glow emanating from his glove keening against the air as a high pitched whine. All the energy of the power sword diffused in his grasp, seemingly just absorbed by his body.

"Good reflexes, buddy," he answered. Around them, the Dogs of War were snapping their weapons into place, leveling them with the Ultramarines that swarmed up the dune, backed by two Predator tanks, four Rhino APCs and a Land Raider. "Now why don't you call off yer boys before mine gotta take this to the next level?"

Sicarius struggled against Jax's grip. "Are you mad? We are the Ultramarines! And besides, I have the holy armored vehicles of the Adeptus Astartes on my side, not to mention the blessings of the Immortal God-Emperor!"

Jax yanked the sword out of Sicarius's hands and powered it down. "First, I'm a damn saint, so I win on the God-Emperor thing."

He muttered into his commlink. A moment later and every tank and APC on the field was leveling their weapons at the Ultramarines' rears, loaded and ready to rock. In confusion, the Space Marines lowered their weapons, following the scattered orders of lower sergeants.

"And second, I've got a quote fer you: steal the other guy's tanks when he ain't looking and he can't do a damn thing."

In a heartbeat, Jax stepped forward and punched Sicarius in the face. The Ultramarine captain fell to the ground, unconscious.

Jax looked down at him. "Edmund Duke wrote that, but I don't expect you read it."

Gagarin snapped his bolter up, but didn't get to fire, as stars exploded across his vision and he fell to the ash.

(' ')

Dimitri watched the sergeant fall to the ground and lowered the butt of his Impaler. Jax looked over at him and smiled.

"Nice. He'd of had me, weren't fer you."

"I doubt that," Dimitri replied.

He looked down at the rest of the Ultramarines, who were still too confused about their own tanks threatening them to care that their command squad was knocked out. Dimitri didn't blame them.

"So, what's going on with their armor?"

Jax looked up from Sicarius. "Oh, um, Menshaw's guys stole it all."

Dimitri blinked. "All of it?"

"Looks like."

"Won't the Ultramarines, you know, be offended and try to kill us for that?"

"Nope," Jax replied, setting a hand on his shoulder. "Because you're gonna make sure they're alright with the idea. Work something out. I'm gonna load up the boys."

With that, he marched down the dune, waving the rest of the Dogs to his position and pushing through the assembled Ultramarines.

With a deep breath, Dimitri stepped up to the top of the dune. He cleared his throat and let his mouth do the work.

"Ultramarines, I require your attention! Battle Saint Jax has blessed your Captain and Sergeant, so they will be undergoing a holy sleep for the next few minutes. Do not disturb them, for the Emperor's great blessing will need peace to take hold. When they awaken, make sure they know that your armor has been commandeered for a great and noble purpose, and that it will be returned to them with full blessings upon all component parts."

The Ultramarines roared in agreement, believing every word as though it had come from the Emperor himself.

Dimitri let out a breath. That went well.

"'Ey, when's we gettin' outta 'ere?" Gort asked, suddenly beside him. "'Cuz I'z gettin' real bored."

A collective gasp surged through the crowd, and bolters snapped up. Gort went for his snazzgun, but Dimitri stopped him. Stuck holding the ork's arms at his sides, the equerry looked up at the Marines awkwardly. He tried for a response, cringing as he began.

There was no way they were going to buy this…

Sixty Seconds Later

Dimitri pushed Gort into the Land Raider and closed the hatch behind him. "Jax? Give me a cigarette. That was the single stupidest thing I've ever done in my whole damn life."

The Confederate turned and tossed him a pack. "Everything alright? They buy whatever ya told 'em?"

"That and then some," Dimitri replied. "Throne be damned, but people are stupid."

"Can't be that bad."

"They saw Gort, freaked out, and were about to shoot him."

"Oh."

Dimitri took a long drag on his smoke. "And you know what I said? I said he was the Emperor's Holy Ork, and they cheered. What the hell?"

"Well, he sorta is," Jax said, scratching Gort behind the ears. If the ork resented being treated like a dog, he didn't show it. The tapping foot and low woof didn't help. "Think about it: he was created by humans."

"I'z an Humie Luva!"

"Yes you are!" Jax cooed.

Dimitri sat down and knocked his head against the interior wall. "Ugh. We just attacked and stole from the Ultramarines, and they're okay with it. What is wrong with this galaxy?"

"I'll tell ya what's wrong with it," Jax said. "Fucking necrons. Menshaw: get this half-ass tank circus moving to the next objective. We've got alien robot monsters to kill."

**Author's Note: Someone called out, and I heeded that call. I even stopped playing StarCraft 2 in order to do it.**

**Anywho, tell me what you thought. See you soon with another update.**

**Later.  
**


	24. Chapter 24: We'll Be Back Part III

Menshaw gripped the control yokes in his hands, feeling them rock as the rhino beneath him crawled across the rock-strewn ground. Ahead, the gauss spike climbed into the clouds, green lightning spewing up and into the orbital lanes. The structure was at least six hundred feet tall, higher than any of the town watchtowers back home. Still, it wasn't intimidating.

The few hundred necrons standing guard around it, on the other hand…

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 24: We'll Be Back: Part III_

The first gauss blast collided with the Land Raider's flank and cut through into the interior, taking the head off a Kriegan where he stood ready to charge. Dimitri caught the boy as he fell, crouching with the weight and narrowly avoiding the second blast where it tore through another Dog's torso. In that instance, the victim was able to at least scream before he died from another two blasts, each to his chest.

Dimitri looked up at Jax and yelled over the incoming. "Now what?"

The Battle Saint kicked the control panel and dropped the assault ramp. "Dogs of War, engage!"

Across the field, the Dogs poured from Rhino APCs and charged under the cover of Predator tank fire. Shells landed ahead of them, directed into specific targets by Ratdog gunners. Jax moved ahead of everyone, his boots hitting the hard-edged rock shards that surrounded the tower. Dimitri and the rest of the command squad followed him up, hitting what he missed and shoring up the flanks.

Animal Mother rushed up to the Confederate's side, his Catachan Fang splitting a necron's head open before the machine could attack the Battle Saint. The Catachan kicked the dead necron down the rockslide and Dimitri tracked it with his Impaler, mangling the hulk as it tumbled. He wasn't about to let the thing get back up.

He was reloading when another two fell past him, their heads completely severed. Looking back up the slope confirmed his worries; Animal was going berserk.

The bulky sergeant pushed ahead of even Jax's powerful advance, hacking side-to-side and letting his Impaler hit anything that wasn't in arm's length. He broke into Jax's cone of fire, stabbing a necron over and over before ripping it in half with his rifle, and forcing Jax to cease fire.

"Shit, Animal! What's the matter with you!" Jax reached out and grabbed the man's shoulder. "Calm down before—"

Animal knocked Jax's hand away and snarled at him. "Before what? Before I do something reckless and get everyone killed? Before I do something _exactly_ like you did back on Talaris?"

Jax reached out again. "What are you talking about?"

Animal pulled out of reach. "Shut up, you bastard!"

Before Jax could say anything more, Animal charged forward, scrambling up the rocks. He stabbed another necron in the neck, breaking the blade off. Cursing, he tossed the useless hilt aside and emptied his magazine into the robot point blank, ripping its metal form apart and sending it to the ground in tatters.

Holding his rifle one-handed, Animal moved higher, cutting down everything in front of him.

Dimitri hauled himself up to Jax's level. "He losing it?"

"Completely," Jax replied, starting forward. "Gort! Get over here!"

(' ')

Manker pushed his way up the eastern slope, leading his company under the directed cannon fire of both Predators. As a former Death Korps officer, Manker had been pitted against the necrons more often than any other foe, as it was felt the Kriegan's cold demeanor was best suited to the psychological environment of most necron battlefields.

The idea was partially correct. Kriegans did do well with necrons, but they were not cold. Manker understood this like no outsider ever could: the Kriegans weren't cold, they were just dedicated.

And right now, Manker was dedicated to taking out this damn defensive ring.

Necrons usually preferred a dynamic defense, with hidden groups of troops preferable to static entrenching methods. So when Manker spotted the dozen destroyers moving around his right flank, he wasn't surprised.

"Spielan Squad, Kavien Squad: destroyers on your three o'clock," he spoke into the commlink clearly and calmly. "Engage."

The two squads turned in their advance, hunkered down, and opened fire. The first three destroyers caught the fusillade head-on and spun out of control, crashing into the rocks in green-tinged explosions.

The remaining destroyers turned into the fire and surged forward, their anti-grav engines propelling them above the rocks as they returned fire. Green blasts from the heavier gauss cannons burst across the cover near the Kriegans' position, and four dogs dropped in the opening volley.

"Spielan Squad taking fire," sounded a voice. "Going to rockets."

The Dogs of Spielan Squad let fly with their RPGs, the superior CMC targeting systems directing the shots spot-on. The destroyers detonated and fell to the ground, elongated bodies coming apart in grand splashes of sparking debris.

"Flank clear, continuing advance."

Manker shot another necron in the head. "Copy. Ave Imperator."

(' ')

The Rhino shuddered under multiple impacts, the heavy armor coating its hull tearing like paper under the heavy necron weaponry. The engine exploded where it was mounted toward the front and turned the cockpit into a shrapnel box. Menshaw threw himself to the floor, but the co-pilot wasn't so lucky. By the time the vehicle had come to a stop, his vitals had flatlined thanks to the bloodied support strut sticking out of his visor.

Apparently thinking the rest of the crew dead, the necron gunners moved on to other targets, and Menshaw was left alone. Quietly, he reached up and took the dead copilot's hunting blade, then sat down with his Impaler across his lap.

If he was going to fight the rest of this bloody war, he wasn't doing it with this unwieldy piece of poo.

(' ')

Animal Mother screamed as he ran the last few meters of his charge to the top, firing his Impaler on full auto at the last necron. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recognized the xenos contraption as an immortal, one of the under-lieutenants that would be present at a structure like this gauss spike. The rest of his mind howled for blood, and Animal Mother gave it just that.

His bayonet flashed as it sprang out from the lock-bit between his rocket launcher and the spike barrel, and Animal crammed it into the immortal's tattered guts. Arcs of electricity spat from the dying xenos. They poured up his rifle and across his body, heating his armor and burning off the paint.

The immortal's clawed fingers scrapped against his visor, twitching as the last reserves of its digitized life rushed out. Animal roared into its face and held onto the trigger, pumping the last of his clip into its body, before it finally died.

Animal stepped back, pulled out his flak pistol, and blasted the xenos cyborg's head apart.

"There," he muttered, turning back to the battle behind him. The last of the necron defenders were falling under the weight of the Dogs' attack, and the armor support was climbing up the rocks to meet with the rest of the unit. "All done."

He caught the sight of Gort and Jax marching up the slope, and before he could do anything, the ork punched him in the face.

(' ')

Dimitri got there just as Gort hauled Animal back to his feet and slammed him against the gauss spike, the first thing he heard being Jax's florid stream of insults.

"Goddamn fucking son of a bitch!" The words made Dimitri cringe. This was going no where fast. "Breaking formation? _Breaking formation_! Do you have any idea how many fights've been lost because of stupid shit's _breaking formation_!"

Animal spoke through gritted teeth. "No. How many?"

"A whole goddamn lot!" Jax roared.

"Jax—" Dimitri started.

The Confederate whirled on him. "No, Dimitri. I can hear it already and I say no. This is most definitely a time for yellin' and I am most definitely gonna yell because borderline heresy puts me in a mighty yellsome mood!" He turned back around. "Gort: move!"

Before the ork could react, Jax shoved him out of the way. He grabbed Animal by the visor rim and slammed him into the black steel tower three more times, then got right up in his face.

"Think yer pissed off, huh? Think ya got somethin' got ya angry? Think losin' yer team and gettin' pulled out of yer regular duties got ya a little off kilter? Well I got a question: where do ya get off thinkin' that yer the only one!

"I been where yer at, I walked that road before and I lived to tell you that it ain't never gonna get any better, and stayin' pissed that they're dead ain't no fuckin' way to honor 'em!"

Animal's eyes narrowed. "I'm not mad at them," he growled.

Jax leaned in, hissed "Then you got some growin' up to do," and threw the Catachan, two tons of armor and all, right back down the hill. When Animal finally reached the bottom, Jax shouted after him. "Now go and sit in the Land Raider while the rest of us grown-ups take care of business!"

As the sergeant went off to do just that, Dimitri stepped up to do his job. "Manker reports all necrons KIA, and a secured perimeter. Seven dead from his company. Menshaw says he's lost ten."

The news seemed to calm the Battle Saint, or at least sober him. Finally, he turned back to the tower. "Seventeen dead for this."

"Yes," Dimitri replied. "I'm no expert, but at that rate, and with six more towers to go, won't we all be, um, dead by the end?"

Jax nodded. "Yeah, but how else're we gonna do it?"

A burst of machine code sounded from behind them, and both men turned to see Castarius standing above a broken necron. He looked up at them with something nearing a grin on his face.

"I may have a solution."

(' ')

Deaths: tallied. Kills: tallied. Perimeter: established. Patrols: regulated. Report: given. Weapon: reloaded. Armor check: complete.

His post-fight checklist finished, Manker sat down on a rock, popped his visor, pulled back his gas mask and took a long drag on a short cigar. He didn't light it—he never lit it—but merely sucked on it. There was no flavor anymore, but after sixteen years and a thousand battlefields, he didn't expect it would.

Sometimes, he wondered why he kept it and why he took it out at times like this one. So far he didn't have an answer.

He saw Menshaw approaching and tucked it away in its plastic container. Slipping it into an empty compartment on his ammo harness, he stood to greet his fellow officer.

"Lieutenant Menshaw."

"Hey, Manker."

Manker frowned. Though he would never think so himself, he believed an outsider might not think Menshaw's kind to be very disciplined. An outsider—certainly never Manker himself—might question the Battle Saint's sanity in entrusting such responsibility to these half-men.

But not Manker. Never Manker.

"What is that?" he asked, pointing at the weapon in Menshaw's paws.

"This is my new invention," replied the ratling, holding it up.

Manker stared at it. To him, it looked like a C14 Impaler rifle with its stock removed and barrel length halved. The RPG portion was removed as well and seemed to be slung over Menshaw's shoulder on a length of leather cut from an APC's cargo webbing.

"That is not an invention."

Menshaw cocked an eyebrow. "Oh? Wait a moment. Hey, Sternev! Whatcha think that thing on your back is?"

One of the Ratdogs on patrol shouted back, "Your invention, Chief!"

Menshaw looked back up at Manker. "Huh? What's that prove?"

"That idiocy is contagious to your kind," Manker replied. He then marched off, hoping to find somewhere more peaceful to take a moment's reprieve.

Menshaw scrambled after him, but tripped and fell into a crack in the rocks. Stuck there, he punched the ground and muttered, "I hate this gakking planet."

(' ')

One of Castarius's servo arms pried out another block of booby-trapped wire and tossed it over his shoulder. Dimitri reached out and caught it. Turning it over in his hand, he felt its steel form wriggle. Dropping it with a yelp, he stepped up beside the Techmarine.

"So you're going to do what?"

"I am going to force my way into this structure's power grid and overload its energy supply, sending a backwash through the entire anti-orbital network so that the system destroys itself."

"Wow," Jax muttered, "I saw that in a movie. Or, like, ten movies. Will they all explode?"

Castarius shook his head. "The towers' internal components will fuse together, causing the death of the living metal that all necron things are comprised of. All we are likely to see is a change of weather."

"Nevermind, then." Jax started to walk away. "I ain't seen this in a movie."

When he was gone, Dimitri leaned in. "You mean try, right?"

"Come again?"

"You mean you'll try. There's no way you can do this for sure."

Castarius looked up at him. "Equerry Vlasna, I am Astartes and I am Mechanicus. I have enough ability to command and maintain the operation an entire starship on my own if I so choose. I will not try; I will do what I say, and that will be that."

As the Techmarine went back to his work, Dimitri fell to silence. After a minute, he spoke up again. "So what kind of training taught you how to interface with necron technology?"

"That is a long tale," Castarius replied. "And besides, one cannot simply open the tome of my life to the middle and start reading. It would strip away the context."

Dimitri smiled. "Well, then one of these days, you're gonna have to tell me everything from the beginning."

"No, I won't. Now make ready. I have already tripped the first pickup. A reclamation force should be here within the hour."

**Author's Note: So remember when I was all like 'this necron story arc will be precisely three parts, blah, blah, blah'? Well, it seems as though it'll be at least two over that.**

**I haven't been responding to reviews like I'd like too, and that's totally my fault. StarCraft 2 just sort of does that to people, I guess. That said, I did read a review that was like, 'include stuff from SC2 into the story!'**

**So here comes a question. While I intend to give Jax's boys stuff like Marauder and Firebat armor, I really don't know how far is too far. For instance: do they really need siege tanks and vikings? I can see both being quite useful in the 41st millennium, especially the latter, but I don't want to alienate the Dogs' attachment to the 40k world.**

**Sorry for the lengthy note, but there was stuff that I needed to talk about.**

**Anyway, give me your thoughts and I'll see you next weekend.  
**


	25. Chapter 25: We'll Be Back Part IV

After ten minutes the Dogs were dug in around the base of the tower, entrenched behind barriers made of upturned ash rock. The Ratdogs formed the outer ring, hunkered down where the strengths of their shorter range, higher durability and concealable nature would be played to. The Kriegans stood higher up, their combat shields ready to make up for their lack of cover.

The still operating vehicles had been pulled up higher as well, with the Predators entrenched behind the wrecked Rhinos. The Land Raider was the centerpiece of the defense, its array of lascannons ready to take out the heavier targets.

And atop it stood Jax, arms crossed and rifle slung, staring out across the midday ashwastes. It was from here that he had directed the construction of the defenses, and it was here that Dimitri found him now.

"Castarius is saying he needs two hours. How long can we hold out if there's an attack?"

"Depends on the size." Jax didn't seem too talkative.

Dimitri frowned. "You're still angry about Animal," he said. It wasn't a question.

Jax looked at him. "Wouldn't you be?"

"No," Dimitri replied. "Not if breaking formation was the problem. I'd have gotten over that an hour ago, and you would've even faster, unless something else was the real cause."

"So what's that matter? You worried I'm gonna lose it or some such?" Jax asked. "'Cause I got news for ya: Alpha Squadron boys don't break."

Dimitri glared at him. This was getting tedious. Getting Jax to open up was like pulling teeth, and at this point, he didn't have the damn time.

"Fuck you."

The Confederate whipped around and stormed across the top of the Land Raider, the entire vehicle rocking under his weight. He came to a halt inches from Dimitri's chest, his breath steaming the smaller man's visor. It took all of Dimitri's strength not to shy away.

"What'd you say to me?" he growled.

"You heard what I said." Dimitri rose to Jax, standing on the top of a turret to get on a level eye line. "Aside from my position as your chief equerry, main liaison to the world outside this unit, and half the time your damn translator, I am also your closest and possibly only friend. So if I ask you what's wrong and you try to deflect the issue and ignore a real mental problem that could hinder your performance and put your life in danger, I believe I am entitled to curse at you.

"Now then, do you want to talk about it?"

Jax stared at him for a long time before speaking. When he did, his voice was so low he verged on mumbling. "This…is harder than I thought it'd be. How many have we lost so far? Twenty. A flat twenty and we aren't done yet. Before we leave here we'll have lost a fourth of our forces if not more. I don't care if we win or not on paper, but that'll be a loss."

"It's our first mission as a team," Dimitri answered.

"Well it ain't mine," Jax snapped. "Back in the day I used to live for this, used to fight just for the next bunch of crazy shit. Hell, the original Dogs of War—the guys this unit's named for—practically lived for the next 'impossible mission'. A sorry bunch of war hounds looking for the next thing to shoot." He stopped for a minute and looked down at his armored hands. "Guess I never realized how much losing someone fucks with you when yer a commander. Being a sergeant's different. It's more expected, and the numbers are smaller.

"And you know what bugs me more than anything, Dimitri? The fact that after all this we have to go out and get replacements, and Castarius has to refit and repair armor, and it'll become a never-ending cycle. Can't do much galaxy saving with the whole operation bogged down waiting for some new blood and a tune up."

"I promise that won't be too hard," Dimitri replied. "After all, as equerry it is my job to take care of logistics and recruiting."

That got him smiling. "Well, that's good. Have I ever thanked you?"

"Not a once," Dimitri replied, walking off. "But I kind of filled it in anyway."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 25: We'll Be Back: Part IV_

First contact occurred forty five minutes later over the western dunes as a line of necrons moving forward at rest. The commlink crackled with Menshaw's voice as the ratling officer reported in.

"We've got 'em over here!" he squealed. "Lots and lots of 'em, coming in over the dunes! Looks like a bunch of regulars, though. Nothing special."

Manker's voice followed suite. "Correction. Two hundred regular warriors led by twenty immortals."

"Wait, how can you tell?"

"Look at the staves."

"The huh?"

Manker sighed. "Death Korps requesting free fire."

Jax watched the incoming necrons from atop the land raider. Directly next to him was Gort, standing near one of the treads with his snazzgun and Animal Mother. The Catachan held his Impaler with a tight grip and he rocked back and forth in seething hatred.

Jax ignored him. "Request denied, Manker. Let 'em get closer."

"And what about us?" Menshaw asked.

"You just stay the hell down in yer ambush positions and try not to act noticeable." Jax switched frequencies and cleared his throat. "Tanks, open up."

The Predators' barrels coughed flame and sections of the necron lines bloomed with crimson starbursts. Chunks of steel soared skyward, ejected from the crumpled bodies of larger necrons, while the smaller warriors were blown into nonexistence. The Land Raider fired with them, its lascannons vaporizing whole squads.

Jax stood fully, Impaler at his shoulder. "Okay, now! All fire! All fire!"

Salvos of spikes launched from the defenses and hit the necrons head on. Warriors tripped and fell as their systems were torn open by the hailstorm. Gauss blasts spat back, hissing as they hit the rocks and electing death screams out of the Dogs they hit.

The battle was joined.

(' ')

Dimitri had been with Manker when the shit hit the fan, checking the Kriegan positions for Jax. Now he found himself crouched behind a wrecked Rhino, a Predator tank to his right and Manker to his left.

The lieutenant was more like a machine than the xenos he was fighting, going through the motions of firing and reloading without pause. He never fumbled a magazine, never jammed a receiver, and never missed a beat.

For that matter, neither did his men. Dimitri watched a Kriegan lose an arm to a flayer blast and keep on fighting with one hand, only pausing to pick his rifle back up.

"These men are insane," he muttered.

"Wrong, equerry," Manker replied during one of his reloads. "They're determined. They'll keep on winning until we're all dead."

Dimitri frowned. "How are we supposed to win if we're all dead?"

"By having a positive kill to death ratio," Manker replied without pause. He then spun out of cover and opened up, his rifle roaring. "Now, move. I will cover you."

Dimitri sprinted from the cover of the rhino and ran behind the front, passing by the embattled Dogs while trying not to stumble on the rocks and shell casings. The thought was absurd, but in two minutes of hostilities, the perimeter was already covered by spent brass.

He dodged through the defenses until he reached Jax near the land raider. The Confederate was still on the roof, firing one handed at the incoming necrons.

"Dimitri!" he shouted. "They're trying to surround us! In a minute, they're gonna call in the cavalry! Pass the word to Menshaw to pop tubes when that happens!"

Dimitri ignored him for the moment. "Jax, what the hell are you doing up there!"

"Uh, commanding the battle," Jax replied, now on the commlink. "Where the hell've you been?"

"You'll get shot if you stand up there!"

"Yeah, but I think that's okay. Know how my hands got all glowy when I grabbed the smurf's sword?"

Dimitri nodded. Now that he thought about it, that power sword should have sliced right through Jax's hands. Somehow, the white light from the Confederate's palms had stopped it.

"Yes, but how did you do that?"

"Not rightly sure. But check this out."

Jax stepped forward on the Land Raider and started shooting from the bow, working over the nearest necrons and drawing attention. Eventually, a destroyer tracked him and let rip with its heavy gauss cannon. The green blast arced across the battlefield right for Jax's position.

"Jax!" Dimitri shouted.

"Hiya!" Jax shouted, throwing his left hand in front of him.

A high-pitched whine grated against Dimitri's ears, the noise grating like a human scream. Jax's palm flashed a brilliant white and the gauss blast discharged before him, the energy soaking into his open palm.

Jax then took aim and put the destroyer down with a full clip and a rocket before turning to Dimitri, his visor retracting to show a beaming face. "See that?"

"Where did it go?" Dimitri asked. "Did you absorb it?"

Jax shrugged. "Maybe a little. I do feel kinda tinglesome."

"How is it that you can do that?"

"I'm thinkin' it's 'cause of my general saintliness, but I been wrong before."

Dimitri turned to go talk to Castarius, muttering.

"Now he can absorb energy attacks. Great."

(' ')

The destroyers came in droves, moving ahead of the rest of the force on their hover carriages. Ignoring the incoming fire of the Kreigans, they forced their way onto the lower rocks, moving upwards with the quiet grace of the wraiths they resembled. If they got behind the main lines no force no matter how well armed would stand up to this attack for more than five minutes longer.

Thankfully, they didn't.

"Ratdogs!" Menshaw called out, "Kill 'em all!"

Crouched as he was in the crevasse of two boulders, Menshaw had a clear view of the vulnerable underside of a destroyer. He aimed his rocket launcher and fired. Fire from the close range explosion washed across his small body, peeling the paint off his armor. The destroyer itself, its guts immolated, fell to the rocks in several pieces.

All along the Ratdog defensive ring, similar events were carried out simultaneously as Menshaw's brilliant trap was sprung. No destroyer made it past them, and necron fast attack support was ruined for the remainder of the battle.

With a grunt and a curse, Menshaw pulled himself up from his hiding place and looked around. He paused to look at the demolished necron contraption next to him. The sight drew a sneer to his lips.

"I love it when a plan comes together!"

He looked over at Private Sternev and grinned. The younger Dog grinned back, and both men went back to the fight with renewed vigor.

(' ')

Jax's firing pin snapped on an empty barrel.

"Well, crap," he muttered, reaching for another clip. He felt around in his ammo pouches, but found nothing.

"Double crap." He hopped down from the Land Raider, evading a stitching of gauss blasts by mere inches, and landed next to Gort and Animal Mother. "Hey, Gort, you got a spare gun in that pack of yours?"

"Yerp." Gort stopped firing and ducked down to rummage, leaving Animal Mother to fend off twice his regular targets. After a moment, he held up a bulky pistol. "How 'bout dis 'ere?"

"I got a pistol, Gort."

"Not like dis'n 'ere, ya don't." Gort pressed a latch release on the gun's side, snapping the boxy firearm into its true form. Two more barrels appeared, accompanied by a rocket tube, some kind of las-capacitor and a thermoptic scope. "See? It's real flash, boss."

"Yeah, it is. But I need something with more kick, y'know?"

Animal Mother leaned back. "Are you actually having a shopping moment right now?"

"Shut the fuck up!" Jax roared. "You don't get to talk! I'm still pissed with you!"

The Catachan rolled his eyes and went back to fighting while Gort continued his digging. Eventually, he pulled out a gun that seemed too large to have even fit in the pack.

"So 'dis 'ere's me favorite gun 'sides me main snazzy 'ere," he said, patting his primary rifle with affection. "Anyway, 'dis'ns got all sorts'a close range mashup capes. If ya lookin' fer a good old scrappin' an' ya needs somefing 'sides a choppa, 'dis 'ere's da best dere is at whut it duz, and whut it duz—"

"Perimeter break!" Animal shouted, backpedaling from a charging immortal.

Gort spun around and fired his new weapon, destroying the immortal's entire torso with a barrage of steel shards, gauss spikes, las-blasts and micro-missiles. The necron fell back from the makeshift battlements and died, leaving Gort to turn to Jax.

"—is straight killy. I call it da Mangla."

Jax held out his arms. "Gimme."

(' ')

The attack was coming to a head. Manker could feel it in his bones: that central moment that determined who won or lost the fight, that lone instance of life or death in a field of others that somehow distinguished the winners from the losers, that single space of time wherein those who would retreat and those who would die were identified.

The necron attack was shifting, constricting in a single point as opposed to everywhere at once. The xenos warriors surged toward the Confederate's position, overwhelming everything in front of them, and Manker ordered his company accordingly.

This was no feint; the battle would be won or lost there, with the Battle Saint, and Manker intended to be where he was needed when the time came.

(' ')

Jax, like Manker, could feel it coming. That said, he had a much clearer view of how the event would go down. From where he stood at the center of the defenses, he could see how the necron attack had shifted to concentrate in this one point, breaking defenses built to stand up to a more general threat with ease.

Menshaw had ordered his company to retreat, to pull away from the outer perimeter and onto higher ground. It was a fighting withdraw, with the Ratdogs pumping spikes into the oncoming necrons.

The aliens themselves consisted of a lot of warriors and a few immortals, the latter surrounding a much bigger threat: the haunting form of a necron lord.

Recognizing the lord as the real threat, Jax gritted his teeth and got ready for a fight.

(' ')

Gort couldn't feel a damn thing, but he thought this whole 'fighting the metal men' thing was real flash. Plus, the killing was good, and that made Gort all kinds of happy. Maybe he'd even take out the big lord one coming at them. That'd make one hell of a trophy.

Grinning like only an ork could, Gort jumped into the fray.

**Author's Note: Yeah, he can absorb energy attacks. So what? Did you think this story was supposed to be completely serious?**

**Don't worry, I have a very good reason for him to do so. And no, he can't just absorb every attack that comes at him. He can get overloaded and die. The next chapter shows what he has to do to keep that from happening. I'm keeping him 'balanced', don't freak out, it's all good, he isn't going to become Dr. Manhattan.**

**But still, I think it's pretty fucking rad.**

**On another note, thanks for the feedback on my last question. I think I've figured it all out now.**

**That said, I now have another one. For the next arc we have a few options: **

**A) Flesh Castarius out completely, giving him a full storyline dedicated to where he's from and why he won't talk about it, and resolve his issues in one way or another.**

**B) Do some more stuff with Adamus. He's the bad guy, after all, and he needs to fight some good guys. Have him go head-to-head with the newer Dogs and see what happens.**

**C) Do something like what I could do for Castarius, but for Gort-Malog Gragnatz da Humie Luva. Keep in mind that if we do this, Gort might leave the story and get a spin-off all to himself. No promises, though.**

**So, those are the options. If you like one above the others, please tell me. If you hate them all, please tell me. If you have your own idea, please-well, you get the idea. Just tell me something, preferably with a review.**

**I really do like them. I'm kind of a whore like that.**

**Later.  
**


	26. Chapter 26: We'll Be Back Part V: Finale

The necron immortals and warriors closed with the humans. They were experienced with fighting humans, having done so throughout all the failed attempts to retake this tomb world over the years.

But they had never fought these humans.

The Dogs of War repelled them with extreme prejudice, not by defending in a test of firepower, but in a close-quarters maul-fest that turned the battlefield into a heavy metal bar fight, with the Battle Saint going mono-a-mono with the necron lord as the centerpiece.

Jax dodged a thrust from the xenos cyborg's stave and shot it in the face with his Mangla. The blast was at full power, discharging all of the weapon's seven barrels at once, but the lord merely shrugged off the hit and lunged forward again.

The Confederate jumped back, avoiding the strike, and shouted, "Gort! Your fucking gun doesn't work against this guy!"

"'Ey, not mah problem."

Jax spun to the right and fired into the lord's flank. Again it did nothing, and again he had to dodge a stave attack.

"Son of a bitch! What do you mean it ain't yer problem? You gave it to me!"

"Sella not 'sponsible fer 'quipment failure," Gort replied, blasting an immortal into molten steel with his snazzgun. "Youse on ya own."

"Yer a dick!" Jax shouted.

The stave came around again, forcing Jax to duck under it. In anger, he dropped the Mangla and punched the lord into the air with a ferocious uppercut. Leg servos groaning, he pushed off the blackened rock and followed his opponent up. In mid-air, at the apex of their jump, he latched onto the xenos commander and together they rode into the ground.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 26: We'll Be Back: Part V: Finale_

The lord climbed to its feet, the joints knocked out of alignment during the fall coming back into place with sparks and the hum of living metal. Its stave soared across the battlefield and into its hand, returning to its master after being knocked asunder in the mid-air brawl.

Jax bounced to his feet and stared down the alien machine. Seeing the reformation of its body, he pulled his flak pistol and dropped to a fighting stance.

"Okay, Metal McDickface, let's do this!"

Both combatants rushed one another and collided mid-field, dodging and striking with blur-fast movements. Jax dodged the stave over and over, planting flak pistol shots in weak points on the lord's body. He focused on knocking out one part at a time, mangling a knee here or a shoulder there, to keep the lord off balance.

It worked and the second he saw an opening, he was on the bastard, tearing cords and punching it in the face. He tackled the lord to the rocks and pried off part of its chest armor, exposing its internal components.

The stave cracked him in the side of the head and knocked him aside, dazed by the impact. The lord sprang up next to him and used his stave's end like a lightning rod, throwing arcs of gauss energy at Jax.

The Battle Saint spun into the attack and held up his hands. The energy connected with his palms, the green xenos beams contrasting the increasingly white radiance emitted from Jax's hands.

The lord stepped forward, keeping the attack up, and forced Jax back onto a knee, the sheer physical pressure of the beams driving him down. He grunted under the strain, letting whatever force allowed him to do so absorb the alien energy into his body. The feeling he now experienced went beyond tingling into pain. The act of absorbing so much so fast was killing him.

As the heat of the incoming energy filled him, Jax let out a scream.

(' ')

Embedded as he was with one hand in a necron's gut and the other controlling his Impaler's constant stream of fire, Animal Mother still heard the Confederate's cry. A lesser man would have found an excuse not to help the Battle Saint. A lesser man would have taken the tension he had experienced with Jax in the past few days into account in some kind of conscious decision.

But Sergeant Jayne Casey hadn't become a Dog—hadn't been hand picked by the Battle Saint to do this job—by being a lesser man.

With a roar, Animal pulled himself out of the fight and charged the necron lord. He collided with it at a dead run, knocking it to the ground, pinning it with his own weight, before bashing its face with his rifle's stock.

The lord barked something in xenos-speak and threw Animal aside like so many bricks. The Catachan bounced off the rock and righted himself, ready to take the necron one-on-one. He snatched a quick glance at Jax.

The Confederate was sprawled on the ground. He wasn't moving, but Vlasna was with him, and Animal thought that was enough.

Gritting his teeth, he turned back to the necron lord.

(' ')

"Emperor take you, Jax!" Dimitri shouted as he slammed Jax's visor back. "When you gain the ability to absorb energy, don't test your limits by fighting a necron lord!"

"Whew, I'm seein' stars."

"That's because of all the damn energy in your body!"

Jax's eyes rolled around as he replied. "Dimitri, this kinda hurts."

"Then get it out!" Dimitri shouted. "Learn how to evacuate it from your body before you die!"

His eyes stopped rolling. "You think it'll kill me?"

"Well, I'm not a medicae, but I'm fairly certain that having an unknown amount of weaponized xenos energy flowing through your body is unhealthy!"

"Good point," Jax replied. "Here. Help me up. I've got this."

(' ')

Animal saw the glass of his visor shattering, felt the sting of it slicing the skin of his face, and yelped in surprise. The necron lord's steel fingers snaked around his neck and he was hauled up, armor and all, into the air. Struggling, Animal watched the xenos creature pull back its stave for a final strike, and knew that this was it. He would be with his team again.

"Hey, asshole!"

The lord looked to its right. Animal followed its gaze and saw Jax, standing upright with both hands in front of him. A glow was building up in the Confederate's palms, and it didn't take a genius to put together what was about to occur.

Animal choked out a laugh. "Bye-bye, robot man."

The lord cast a sideways glance at Animal and tossed him to the ground, choosing to face Jax completely.

Seconds later, a blast of the most intense brightness leapt from Jax's hands, lancing out and into the necron. Heat washed across the area, boiling the rocks around the beam. In the sudden illumination, Animal could see the blackened outline of the lord as its metal shell was incinerated.

He was still seeing the image long after the blast had died away and Jax was hauling him to his feet.

"Animal," Jax said, setting a hand on his shoulder. "You saved my ass back there. Thanks."

The Catachan looked around in stunned awe. Not only had Jax's attack destroyed the lord, but it had also devastated the bodyguard of immortals that had accompanied it. The remaining necron warriors were being chased down the rocks and systematically executed by the rest of the Dogs.

"Thank you," he managed at last.

"Ain't nothin' but a thing," Jax replied. "Just doing my job."

With that, Jax walked away, leaving the man called Animal Mother to think about his words.

(' ')

Dimitri met up with Jax on the way up the hill. "And what have you learned?"

"That I kick even more ass now than I did three hours ago."

"Wrong." Dimitri marched in front of Jax, turning as he walked. "You learned that absorbing a lot of energy at once is bad."

The Confederate shrugged. "Not if I shoot it out again. Seems to me that I can't do that little trick lest I got a lot of shit backed up."

"Well put."

"I thought so. How's Castarius doing?"

"Done," Dimitri said. "The anti-orbital grid is completely shut down, and the skies should be clearing up in a few hours. Then we'll be able to get transport planetside to get us the hell out of here."

"What's he doing now?"

"Castarius?"

"Yeah."

"He's repairing the tanks." Dimitri laughed. "Seems as though he wants to give them back in better condition. Like that'll happen."

Jax wasn't laughing. "It will. Get me a line open to Super Smurf Junior."

Dimitri stopped walking. "Wait, you mean you're actually going to give those tanks back?"

"Uh, yeah." Jax stopped and looked at his equerry. "I'm a lot of things, but I ain't a dick."

Dimitri stared at him.

"Okay, well, I am a dick, but I'm not that kind of dick."

Dimitri stared at him.

"Point is, I ain't takin' what's his."

"Whatever, Jax," Dimitri sighed.

"You're mad at me!"

"No, I'm just—" Dimitri stumbled for words. "Look Jax, you can absorb energy attacks through your hands and use them to power god blasts. At this point, I've given up caring."

(' ')

Castarius muttered curses as he worked on the land raider's flank. A gauss weapon of some kind had seared a very neat entry wound into the great vehicle, and he was using his cleansing mechadendrite to purify the ragged edge in preparation for a steel patch. With the lack of facilities on the surface of this world, he could do little more, but he would at least do this much to atone for the humiliation treated to the machine.

As he was working, Lieutenant Manker made his way up the slope. "Excuse me, Techmarine."

"Yes?" Castarius replied, not looking up from his work.

"Would you happen to know anything about bionic limb replacement?"

Castarius looked over and saw the Lieutenant's problem. His left arm was gone, the remaining stump cauterized but still causing much pain. The human hid it well, though. Had his bio scanner not told him so, Castarius would have thought the man completely calm.

There was something admirable about that. Castarius found himself liking this human for his determination. He would have made a good comrade had he been born of the machine cult.

"Yes," he answered.

"What kind can I get?"

"There are several options," Castarius replied, turning back to the tank. "We'll discuss them at a later date."

Manker took no offense. "I understand. Goodbye, Astartes."

The lieutenant left and Castarius continued his work.

(' ')

Two hours later, the brackish clouds that had covered the planet were clearing, letting the first troopships down from orbit. They were massive vessels, chuck full of whole regiments of the Imperial Guard, all ready for the reclamation crusade to take back this world, and as Dimitri stood watching them land on the ash wastes around the Dogs location, he couldn't help but be amazed by the sheer mass of the force.

Guardsmen swarmed the wastes, all showing the colors of their varied heritage with showy banners and trumpet calls. The orders of lower sergeants sounded like gunfire, trumped only by the speeches of higher officers. Tanks rumbled out of their carriers, seen from Dimitri's perspective as armored beetles amongst a sea of ants. Fighters twisted overhead, stitching contrails across the bluing sky that caressed the dark horizon with a glimmer of hope, a horizon only broken by the colossal forms of the war engines of the Adeptus Titanicus.

The Titans of the Legio Metallica unfurled from their landers like newborns, power cords as thick as landcars disconnecting from their backs with great plumes of steam. The ground shook with their first steps, and the ash vibrated at the basal roar of their war calls.

Dimitri grinned. The Dogs roll on this planet was concluded. They had made the hole through which more could come. Now, the might of all mankind would descend and finish the job, and no necron would stand in its way.

"Now what rocks?" Jax said from where he stood at Dimitri's side.

"What's that?" Dimitri replied.

"Humanity," Jax said. He pointed across the miles-wide landing zone. "No matter how bad things get, you can always count on humans to bring enough hurt to get the job done. No matter what dimension or reality or whatever, I've never seen something that can stand up to humans when we're pissed off."

Dimitri looked up at Jax. "I've talked to some of the landing captains. They know who we are. They know who _you _are."

"Well, they oughtta. We did just kick off the whole damn war."

"Before that, Jax," Dimitri emphasized. "The common soldier knows about the Dogs of War, and we've done nothing to distinguish ourselves. How is that possible?"

Jax shrugged. It was intended to look off-hand, but Dimitri could tell his words bothered the Confederate.

"We'll figure it out," Jax said at last. "So, they want a speech or some such?"

Dimitri shook his head. "I already wrote out an announcement."

"Announcement?"

"Yes, a 'campaign-wide personal address by the Battle Saint' was sent into the print shops in orbit. By tomorrow, every Guardsman in theatre will have a copy in their back pocket."

"There's print shops on these ships?" Jax asked. "Y'all got too much space on yer hands."

Dimitri nodded. "Maybe so."

"Well, how's it feel having yer writing out all of everywhere?"

"Pretty good. I can't say I hate this job, Jax."

Jax laughed and smacked him on the back. "Didn't think you would, Dimitri. Now come on, we've got to get off this rock. There's more work needs doing."

An Hour Later

Cato Sicarius pushed his way through the Imperial landing zone, the spearhead of a formation of one hundred Ultramarines, all forcing their way through the human chaff that filled the area. It was almost degrading to be pressed this close to such low-born filth, but at least the humans had the decency to move from his path.

Most had never seen an Astartes before in person, much less one of Gulliman's noble bloodline. The fact that they remained conscious in the face of such warriors surprised Sicarius.

Sicarius made his way up to the center of the assembly field, his armor carrying him up the rocky slope, and stopped.

There were his tanks, his Rhinos and Predators. The former were completely wreaked, perforated with xenos weapons fire, and in several cases exploded. The Predators weren't much better, with just their turrets still functioning.

But the Land Raider, Sicarius's beautiful Land Raider, was the worst. Its treads were completely stripped, its hull ripped open from front to back, and its lascannons bent into knots. But worst of all was its colors. The glorious blue of his Chapter was stained by harsh streaks of black paint, sprayed on in jest to form one phrase.

'Thanks For Letting Us Borrow This, Hope You Have Insurance –Your Friendly Galaxy Battle Saint.'

Sicarius threw his head back and, despite the action being unbecoming of such a noble son of Gulliman, let out a tremendous roar of hatred toward the heavens.

In Orbit aboard _The Hammer's Fall_

The command council met in the observatory at the top of the command decks on Jax's order. With its members filing in, the steel battle plating above them retracted, leaving bare the hardened glass bulb and a view of Kletharka as it rotated above them. Flame bloomed in places across its surface as the Imperial forces detonated surface nukes to try and gain access to the necron catacombs.

Despite the easy reclamation of the surface, humanity would be clearing the planet's crust for years to come.

"Okay, thanks for coming," Jax started. "First off, I just wanna say good job to all of you. We did a hell of a job today, people, and I hope we'll continue to do more in the future.

"So let's get down to it. Castarius, what's going on in your department?"

The Techmarine cleared his throat and began. "Of all suits damaged in the battle, 100% were recovered. Of all weapons damaged or misplaced during the battle, 75% were recovered. All suits are being repaired according to specifications, and all weapons have been replaced from spares. Ammunition expended in the battle numbered precisely 283,996 U-238 gauss spikes, seven hundred flak rounds, and nine hundred cartridges of las-bolts."

Jax groaned. "Manker? Are your people still carrying lasguns into combat?"

"Only as a secondary, sir."

"Nine hundred cartridges seems a tad more than secondary, Lieutenant," Dimitri put in. "Why do they want to use them so much?"

Manker leveled his eyes with Dimitri's. "With respect Equerry Vlasna, no force in the known galaxy can stand up to a Kriegan with a lasgun. Old habits die hard. Besides, we waste no real ammunition by carrying these weapons. We procure and recharge the cartridges on our own. No harm is done, and we still adhere to all standard operating procedures."

"Speaking of SOP," Jax said, "Menshaw. What's up with your people's rifles?"

The ratling officer shifted in place, misreading Jax's question as ill-intended. "Well, Battle Saint sir, the rifle's is just too long. We had to make 'em usable, you know?"

"Don't worry, Menshaw. It's fine. Just make sure you run the design by Castarius."

"I have seen their adaptations," Castarius rumbled. "I understand the design. It is crude but effective, very much like the species that wields it."

Jax raised a finger. "Hey now, don't be a dickwad."

"Indeed, Battle Saint."

"Now then, I already know the death-count, so I don't see a need to go through all that. Be kinda tiresome if ya ask me, so we'll move on. Apparently, people in the Guard already know about me, us, and our mission. Anybody know anything 'bout that?"

Captain Brigham cleared his throat. "I may have an answer."

Everyone turned to look at the old shipmaster expectantly. If there was any pressure on the man, he didn't show it.

"Our astropaths picked up a crimson-level blanket message two days ago. It took a while to decode. Essentially, it was a press junket released straight through the Astronomican to reach every astropath in Imperial space. It spoke of you, Battle Saint, and the Dogs of War as saviors for all mankind."

Dimitri stepped forward, armor whirring and clanging on the deck. "Who the hell authorized this? Better yet, who the hell wrote it, and what the hell were they thinking?"

The shadows at the edges of the observatory spoke. "I believe I can answer those questions, Equerry."

Jax turned around, slowly. "What are you doing here?"

Stepping from the darkness, Inquisitor Tripe smiled.

**Author's Note: There you go. Thought about everything you said and decided we'll be going into Castarius for our next saga, because it's about time we dealt with that. That's why Tripe's back. You know, aside from the fact that I really, really like me some Inquisition and Tripe's totally the coolest bestest evar.**

**Anyway, tell me what you think and all. And, oh, yeah, Jax can shoot fireballs from his hands. 'Sup.**

**See you next week.  
**


	27. Chapter 27: ExGambit: In the Flesh

The priestess screamed and ran, making her way toward the back of the cathedral past pews stained with the blood of her fellow clergy. She kept running, fleeing toward the pool of holy water that waited at the head of the great chamber even as the roar of gunfire churned the mosaics that dotted the walls around her into broken fragments of chipped clay.

The pool was in reach when the bolt found her spine. The heavy projectile punched through her back and detonated in her chest cavity, blasting her torso open and ejecting charred organs in harsh spurts. The last thing the priestess consciously recognized before dying on the floor was her blood spreading like an oil slick across the top of the holy water.

From the ground floor, the agents of Chaos spread throughout the grand cathedral like a plague, the beastmen ransacking the housing spires and murdering all who stood in their path, their gleeful snorts and chortles echoing throughout the rooms and halls.

On the main floor, Adamus Luchance stood next to the shrine pool, fingers drumming on the hilt of his sword. Bored, he spat a gobbet of acidic spit into the water and watched the liquid steam where it touched.

"War Captain?" rumbled Tharok. "Is something the matter?"

Adamus looked up at the obliterator. "No. Prepare the sacrifices. There is work to be done here."

As Tharok lumbered off, the young warlord looked into his distorted reflection in the pool and frowned as he thought about the communiqué _Sandalphon_ had picked up. The Imperium had a new hero, it seemed, and Adamus knew all too well who it was.

He wanted a fight.

He wanted the Confederate.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 27: Executioner's Gambit: Part 1: In the Flesh_

"Seriously," Jax said. "What the fuck are you doing in my council meeting?"

Inquisitor Tripe grinned. "You flatter me, Jax."

"I'm about to flatter your ass all over that wall if you don't start talking."

Dimitri palmed his visor.

"Don't worry, Confederate, I'm not here to make your life harder."

"Right, I suppose you're just bringing us some cookies," Jax muttered.

"It was you that sent out the message." Dimitri finally said. "Why?"

Tripe snorted. "That shouldn't even be a question, my dear Dimitri." He stepped out into the chamber, taking up a place in the council ring like it was the most natural thing in the world. "But I understand why you ask it. After all, it seems as though you have already lost sight of this unit's purpose."

"How so?" Manker put in. The fact that the Kriegan lieutenant had never even seen Tripe before didn't seem to keep him from voicing his opinion.

"Your purpose is to save mankind, but you cannot do that fighting prolonged sieges against necrons and waging war in hive cities. Those are actions of attrition for the Guard. Even the Space Marines are not well equipped enough to fight those kinds of fights."

Tripe looked up at Jax. "You are a Battle Saint. Saints inspire people. It is their primary duty. The only reason you have 'battle' at the head of your title is because you are to inspire people by how you fight."

"So what're we supposed to fight?" Jax asked. "We helped those Guardsmen out today in getting down to the planet, didn't we?"

"And two hundred regiments were just wiped out three systems from here by an Iron Warriors siege, so what's your point?" Tripe shook his head. "Fighting to win regular battles will get you a handful of achievements and a lot of dead teammates. What you need to do is fight battles like the one mentioned in my communiqué."

"What battle was that?" Dimitri asked.

Tripe stepped into middle of the circle and turned as he spoke, quoting the message directly. "'The Battle Saint took it upon himself to selflessly engage a full bastion of the Traitor Legions with only the aid of his chief assistant, fighting their way through the corrupted halls of a Chaos position, to rescue the beloved daughter of a High Lord, the young Marie Xanthius. The heiress was saved and in the end, the day was won thanks to the efforts of the Emperor's own blessed son, Fredrick Jax.'"

After, Tripe turned back to Jax and Dimitri. "Now do you understand? You have to do things that are heroic and noteworthy! Things that can be written about and fed to the masses as epic tales!"

"Throne, Tripe, did you write that yourself?" Dimitri asked.

"Yes."

"That has more cliché tropes in it than warts on an ork's arse. Were you trying to butcher the common speak?"

"I was attempting to leave it up to local speculation and interpretation."

Dimitri laughed. "Balls to that. Look, if you're going to turn us into a propaganda machine, that's fine. But I'm in charge of writing the reports, got it? What we have here is a shot at uniting every planet in the Imperium in some way. I won't see that botched by your poor authorship."

Tripe's face showed genuine hurt, but only for the briefest of instants, before his normal calm sneer took back over. "Very well, Equerry. I'll give this ship's astropaths the necessary clearance to send messages directly to the Grand Imperial Choir on Terra."

"Speaking of this ship," Brigham spoke up, "Just how in the God-Emperor's name did you get on it? I would normally be informed of an Inquisitional guest's arrival."

"I think you just answered your own question, Captain. I am an Inquisitor. You need not bother with how I got aboard."

In the wake of that, as Brigham fell silent, Jax spoke up. "Okay, so we're all down with being heroes. Or, like, bigger heroes than we are now. But I'm guessing you didn't just come halfway across all creation to tell us how to do our jobs."

Jax stepped up to Tripe and looked down at the Inquisitor. "So what gives? You got something for us?"

"Two things in one, actually," Tripe replied, amazingly undeterred by the Confederate's imposing height. "A job for your Dogs, and help for my friend Castarius."

The Techmarine's head swung up instantly. "You've word of them, Inquisitor?"

"Yes," Tripe replied. "I've found your Chapter."

(' ')

Of all the possible reactions Dimitri would have expected from Castarius, marching out of the room without a word was the most inconceivable. As the door closed behind him, Dimitri turned to Tripe.

"Huh?"

"Yeah," Jax added. "What the hell was that?"

Tripe looked back between the both of them. "What? He didn't tell you?"

"Surprising as it is, Inquisitor, Castarius isn't the most talkative of people," Dimitri replied.

"He talks to guns," Jax added.

Dimitri shrugged. "I tried to get him to talk about himself a few times, but he either dodged my questions or flat out ignored me."

"He _talks_ to _guns_," Jax repeated.

"Yeah," Dimitri said. "And he talks to guns."

Tripe sighed. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. For an Astartes to share information about his Chapter with those outside his brothers is almost unheard of."

Menshaw piped up. "He talks to guns? Seriously?"

"Yup," Jax said. "Whispers to 'em like they're his girlfriends or something."

"That's pretty gakking weird."

"No kidding, little man."

Tripe cleared his throat. "As I was saying—"

"I once knew a voidmaster on a gunner skiff that talked to the forward batteries like a preacher," Brigham mentioned. "Crazy bastard used to have conversations with them."

"—Castarius's tale is one of tragedy and—"

"No shit?" Jax asked. "Preached to 'em, huh?"

"Yes," Brigham said. "He had individual names for each gun and everything. Oddest thing I ever saw."

"—and I think your help is required to—"

Manker spoke up next. "One of my comrades in officer school yelled at his own gas mask. Thought it was responsible for his mind poisoning from too much gas exposure. Used to blame his mask for hours, shouting its 'name' in anger."

"Really?" Menshaw asked. "That's nutty. What ended up happening to him?"

"Firing squad. Regimental orders."

Tripe huffed. "Is anyone even listening to me?"

"That seems kind of harsh," Menshaw said.

"Madness cannot be allowed to linger," Manker stated. "It must be cut off at the source, lest it spread."

"Shut up!" the Inquisitor finally shouted.

In the silence that followed, Jax spoke up. "Okay, okay, Tripe's got a point, y'all. We need to take this thing with Castarius, whatever it is, seriously." He turned to his right. "Dimitri: you talk out the details. The rest of us are going back to the bridge for drinks. Right, Brigham?"

"Agreed."

Before Dimitri could protest, Jax led the rest of the command council from the observatory, leaving him behind with Tripe.

Taking a deep breath, he turned to the Inquisitor. "Well then, I guess we have some things to talk about."

Tripe nodded. "We do indeed."

An Hour or so Later

"Castarius is an Executioner," Dimitri blurted.

Sitting as they were around the hololithic table, the command council turned to him in a daze. The influence of alcohol was unmistakable in all their lolling eyes with the exceptions of Jax and Manker. The Kriegan hadn't drunk a drop, and Jax just looked his normal self.

"He kills people?" Jax asked. "Like, for punishments and the like?"

Dimitri shook his head and walked up to the table. "No, no, no. He's an Executioner."

Jax shook his head. "Still not following ya. Want a drink?"

Dimitri slapped the bottle Jax offered aside, breaking it with his massive glove and sending up shouts of dismay from Menshaw and Brigham.

"Jax, the Executioners are a Space Marine Chapter."

"Cool," Jax said, taking another drink. He stopped and looked suddenly very serious. "Wait, Castarius is a Space Marine. You mean he's an Executioner as well as an executioner?"

"Uh, sure?" Dimitri tried to make sense of that, realized the futility of it, and went right on talking. "The Executioners were a Chapter that sided with Huron Blackheart during the Badab War. They were given the Emperor's forgiveness after the war and sent on a hundred year penance crusade to make up for their heresy."

"Right. Heresy. Gotcha."

"They were lost fifty years into their crusade in a massive warp storm near the Isla Expanse. Castarius was being trained on Mars at the time, but he's heard the stories. Most say the warp just came alive and swallowed their fleet."

"Gross."

"Pay attention, Jax," Dimitri said. "Because a distress signal was just picked up from one of their strike cruisers, the _Penitent Evening_, right near where they were lost. This could be the only chance Castarius gets to save his Chapter."

Menshaw leaned forward, his chin resting on his folded forearms. "Oh, I'm sorry, are we actually caring about this guy now?"

"Care to explain yourself?" Manker said.

"I just don't know why we got to go risk our hides for some wankface Astartes is all. It doesn't make much sense to me and I don't think we ought to go."

"That man is your comrade," Manker said with steel in his voice. "You will respect that, you little inbred abomination."

"Say that to my face!" Menshaw shouted, climbing onto the table to be eye-to-eye with the Kriegan.

"Calm down, tiny," Jax said. "Manker's right. Castarius is one of ours, and we're gonna help him any chance we get. Brigham? Best speed for the Isla Expanse, if ya don't mind."

Brigham stood and barked a series of orders, and in less than ten seconds the bridge had transformed into a circus of shouting officers, scurrying menials, and chattering cogitators. Jax stood to leave, and Dimitri followed him.

"Where are you going, Jax?"

"To find Tripe," replied the Confederate. "I've got some questions need answering."

(' ')

It didn't take long to find Tripe. In under an hour, he had already furnished himself a room in the command decks, just one floor below the stateroom shared by Jax and Dimitri. Just how he acquired the room and the two shock troopers guarding it, Dimitri hadn't the faintest idea.

As he and Jax approached, one of the troopers held up a hand. "The Inquisitor isn't seeing guests."

"Look at yourself, boy." Jax's reply was edged by the tang of his external speakers. "Now look at me. You really wanna go there?"

"You don't," Dimitri answered in the following silence. "People tend to die upon trying."

The door behind the troopers opened and Tripe greeted them with a cold smile.

"Gentlemen, do come in. And please forgive my bodyguards. They sometimes get carried away with their duties."

"I could get carried away beating them," Jax muttered as he stepped inside, Dimitri following him in.

The interior of Tripe's quarters was beautiful, easily large enough for one of the ship's first lieutenants. In fact, judging by the dress swords and decorative laspistols displayed around the entryway, a first lieutenant was exactly who Tripe had taken it from. After all, Dimitri didn't think him the man to hang an antique sailboat keel from his mantle place.

The Inquisitor crossed the cabin ahead of them, moving like a wraith in his concealing black coat. "What can I help you with?"

"I want answers," Jax said. "And you're gonna give 'em to me."

"Answers to what questions?"

In answer, Jax held up a lascartridge and crushed it in his fist. There was a contained explosion of ruby energy that expanded, stabilized, and retracted into his palm where it disappeared. The Confederate held out his hand and grunted, expelling a white flash across the room that vaporized a bookshelf.

"Let's start with why the fuck I can do _that_."

Tripe wore a shocked expression for less than an instant, but still it had been there. Dimitri saw it, and he would never forget that look on the Inquisitor's face.

"I've no idea," he muttered. "You can absorb and redirect energy now?"

"Yeah, as big fire-y fireballs."

Tripe frowned. "The prophecy never mentioned that, although it isn't exactly surprising territory for a saint…"

"About that," Dimitri said. "Could we perhaps discuss his sainthood for a moment? Last time I checked, Jax's status as a Battle Saint of the Imperium was little more than a formality to go along with his stewardship of the Dogs and to facilitate a degree of legitimacy to this operation. When did that become legitimate?"

"Honestly? Most likely when His divinity saw what Jax was achieving." Tripe turned away and poured a trio of drinks at a private bar. "The God-Emperor has blessed you, Confederate. You are becoming more and more a saint with each passing moment you spend serving His grand Imperium."

"And part of that gives me blasty-blast abilities?" Jax asked.

"Yes," Tripe replied, "In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this is merely surface of your powers. Saints have been known to do much more than even you have demonstrated." He handed Jax the glass of port, which the Confederate took between two massive fingers. "So please, let us drink to your ascension."

Jax downed his shot in an instant, followed by Tripe. Dimitri waved his away, not wishing to partake in the celebration.

"We're in route to the Isla Expanse now, Inquisitor," he said. "Maybe you would care to brief Castarius on these recent developments?"

At the sound of his name, the Techmarine appeared from an antechamber further in the cabin. His face was grim, and his eyes looked bloodshot from frustration. His armor growled as he walked and took his place near Jax.

"I have already learned of them, Equerry," he said in his usual basal tone.

Jax looked at Castarius. "How you feeling?"

"I'm not." The Techmarine locked eyes with Jax. "The coming fight is an Astartes matter, Executioners more specifically. You are neither. While I would accept your help if forced upon me, I still must ask of you: please allow me to handle this on my own accord."

"No," Jax said. The statement brokered no argument. "Way I see it, this kinda deal needs more push than you can put out by your lonesome. Pulling a whole fleet outta the warp ain't no one man job, so we're going with you."

Castarius merely nodded. "Very well. Now then, I must excuse myself. I've duties that need to be attended to before we can mount a successful attack."

When he had left from the cabin, Dimitri spoke up. "Why does he assume everything is going to involve an attack?"

Jax answered. "Shit Dimitri, you lived in this galaxy longer than me, but even I ain't dumb enough to think you get anywhere without a fight."

**Author's Note: So there's the beginning of the new arc. If you haven't noticed, chapters have started being broken down differently, with the chapter number first, story arc title second, part listing, and finally the chapter title.**

**I don't know why, but I think that's pretty rad.**

**Tripe's back, obviously, and he might even be here to stay. Or, stay as long as a sneaky inquisitor can possibly remain in one place with a thousand and one things to do at any given moment. Tell me what you think of him, if you don't mind. I know he's a bit of a chump, but I'm trying to make him cooler, so input would be very appreciated.**

**Also, I may have another story coming out pretty soon, exclusively for the Warhammer section. It'd be pretty standard fare: Astartes whooping alien and heretic ass all over the galaxy. I do have one major difference from everything else, though, so it won't be just run-of-the-mill. It's also kind of a way for me to atone for all the apparent sins I've committed with this story. Surprisingly enough, I do really like the Space Marines, and I appreciate their 'walking tank' status. I just need a different story to show off my take on that.**

**So, tell me if you'd be interested in reading something like that.  
**

**Coming up, we meet the first examples of the lost Executioners and things start to heat up.**

**See you next time.  
**


	28. Chapter 28: ExGambit: Penitent Evening

The _Hammer's Fall_ moved through the void, a mass of gothic steel piercing the black on columns of blue engine fire, around it nothing but the infinite dark of deep space. The ship was far from any system, in the indefinable vacant space at the very edge of Imperial space. This was the end of the map, the skirts of the Isla Expanse: a section of wilderness space largely unexplored by humanity.

All was quiet on the bridge. Captain Brigham understood why. There was something about deep space that urged silence, like the stillness of a graveyard; where nothing lived, no one spoke.

"Higgins, auspex?" he asked.

His first mate swung around from the sensorum pit. "A flicker, lord. Extreme range."

"Any signature?"

"Yes lord," Higgins replied. "Ping signature is that of an Astartes strike cruiser, immobile and largely powered down. No identification tags, but I can't imagine it being anything but our objective."

"Thank you, Higgins." Brigham nodded and eased back into his command throne. "Notify the Battle Saint's Equerry. Tell him we've found the _Penitent Evening_."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 28: Executioner's Gambit: Part 2: Penitent Evening_

Jax, Castarius and Dimitri were on the bridge ten minutes later, just as the strike cruiser was coming into visual range out of the front view ports. The three men got their first look at the Astartes vessel through a vaulted arch window, viewing it from across the _Hammer's Fall_'s elongated bow.

The _Evening_'s surface was pitted and scared, its weapons towers crumpled in places and ending as stumps in others. Several sections of its armored skin had been peeled back, revealing the skeletal interior. At one point halfway back along its hull there was a deep gash in the ship, exposing several decks.

It was as if some great creature had mauled the ship. If anything was alive within it, Dimitri would be impressed.

"Okay, time for details," Jax said, "What's going on over there?"

Castarius crossed the bridge to Higgin's side as the first mate read off auspex findings aloud.

"Forty decks are voided. Engine readings are dead but those compartments are still intact. Stability in most areas is dubious at best and little to no weapons still function. Life signs are indiscernible from this distance, but the bridge and engine compartments look like they could sustain survivors. There are also several tertiary corridors between the two that are still structurally stable." Higgins looked up at Brigham. "Whoever's in there, they've had a hell of a time holding things together."

Jax nodded as he processed the information. "Castarius, you're the expert here. What's up? Where do we go in?"

"Teleportation with several small teams would be best," replied the Techmarine. "A combat team in the engine room and another in the bridge, as close to simultaneous as possible, would be best."

"Expect trouble?" Jax asked.

Castarius looked at him. "This ship has been lost in the warp for close to three decades. Yes, I expect trouble."

"I should think the bridge team should include Jax and yourself, maybe even Animal and me," Dimitri put in. "If anyone in charge is left alive over there, that's where they'll be."

"Indeed," Castarius replied.

"Then that settles it," Jax said. "We're going in on the bridge. Manker'll take his people into the engine room."

Dimitri raised his eyebrows. "'Manker's people'? As in, his whole company?"

"Yup."

"Well, that's not overkill at all."

Ten Minutes Later

There was a hum, flash of light, and a dizzying punch of vertigo to the gut and Dimitri was fighting barf back down his throat. He lost, and lost his lunch all over the deckplate below him, having had the instant of foresight to pop his visor before doing so. Afterward, while he was still gasping for air and straightening back up, he realized something was wrong with his surroundings.

The _Evening_'s bridge was nothing like how Dimitri had envisioned a Space Marine vessel's bridge. It was trashed, the lights busted, the floorpanels covered in broken instruments, and the walls pockmarked by bolter fire. Nothing was left intact, and the only smell that overpowered the dry blood was—

Dimitri snapped his visor down and whipped his Impaler up in a heartbeat, spurred on by his senses. That smell was the same he had experienced on Morahame, and before during the Novaguard war.

"Brimstone," he muttered. "Jax, get ready for a—"

Bolter fire rang out from the darkness, the rounds slashing the air around him. One exploded against his shoulder pad, blowing neo-steel out in chunks.

Dimitri steadied himself and squeezed the trigger while his visor was still looking for a firing solution. The Impaler roared, spikes cutting the smoke as he raked his fire back and forth at the flashes in the dark.

Next to him, Jax and Animal opened fire in turn, ripping into the surrounding sensor pits with abandon. A chainsword revved in the dark and a Marine hurled himself out of the dark, rushing them with a battle cry.

Jax stepped back, sweeping the attacker's legs out from under him with a hosing of 8mm spikes. The Marine flopped to the ground, reaching for his bolt pistol. Jax shot his wrist and scooped him up from the ground, holding him at arm's length.

"Hold your fire!" he bellowed, the volume of his suit speakers shouting down every other source of noise. "Hold your goddamn fire!"

The Dogs ceased fire, quickly followed by the Marines. In the aftermath, Dimitri stood in shocked silence.

"Okay, now, I'm Battle Saint Fred Jax of the Dogs of War. I got with me a guy by the name of Castarius. He's an Executioner, like the rest of y'all." Jax shook the Marine in his grasp, a lightly armored soldier Dimitri now recognized as a scout. "Now if you don't wanna lose junior here, you'd do best to just come out now. Get me?"

A deep voice boomed from the dark. "Where is this Castarius? Is he with you?"

"I am here," Castarius said, stepping to the front of the group. "Castarius, Techmarine, current servant of the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars in lieu of the lack of a parent Chapter. To whom do I speak?"

"Brother Captain Nothasius, Executioners First Company, First Captain of the Chapter."

A moment later, the speaker stepped out into the light given off by the Dog's shoulder and suit lamps. He was huge, clad in Terminator warplate of the blue and white camo pattern customary of his Chapter. In his right fist he clutched a storm bolter, his left was a crackling powerfist.

Behind him, moving out from the edges of the bridge in a cautious pattern, came a full squad of more Marines, each one carrying their bolters at a tense rest, ready to open up if need be.

Castarius dropped to one knee and made the sign of the Aquilla. "Honored First Captain."

"Rise, Brother Techmarine," said Nothasius, pulling his dogfaced helm from its mount. His face behind the mask was pitted with scars from years of warfare, and he wore a perpetual scowl. "And answer me this: who are your allies?"

Castarius motioned around the group as he spoke. "Sergeant Jayne Casey, Equerry Dimitri Vlasna, and Battle Saint Fredrick Jax, the Confederate. They are members of the Dogs of War."

"Is that a cousin chapter?"

"No, First Captain."

Jax dropped the scout he'd been holding hostage. "The Dogs are Guard, Captain, and I'm the saint leading them." He held out his hand. "Fred Jax."

Nothasius holstered his storm bolter and shook with Jax. Though the Captain was bulkier in his Terminator plate, both men were on a level eye line. That alone must have staved off the inevitable 'you're a saint?' that Dimitri had expected.

"Sorry about the mixup a second ago. We didn't hurt any of y'all, did we?"

"None aside from Cyrius," Nothasius said with a glare at the scout. "Though that will heal. He deserved such wounds for charging blindly like that."

Cyrius the scout shrunk away in shame.

"Maybe so," Jax replied. His helmet mic crackled and he grinned awkwardly. "Excuse me a moment, Captain. I've gotta take this."

As Jax walked off, the Captain turned back to Castarius. "You say you serve Mars now. How long have we been lost in the warp?"

"Forty-seven standard years," Castarius answered.

"By the Emperor," Nothasius muttered. "By our count it's only been a month."

Dimitri frowned. The warp was a complicated and dangerous thing. It wasn't uncommon for time to behave oddly within it, but still, this development was surprising. Maybe with that kind of time inside the other dimension, more of the Executioners were still left alive.

"Captain, we are here to help," he finally spoke up. "Is this ship all that's made it, or is more of your fleet still lost within the warp?"

Nothasius shook his head. "In the warp, yes, but not lost. The rest of the fleet is holding position in a cleared pocket forged within the Empyrean."

"They've what?" Dimitri asked, sure he hadn't heard that right.

"Chaos lulled us into a warp storm and entrapped us, hoping to separate our fleet and tear each ship apart in turn. Between our navigators' guidance, our Librarians' planning and the willpower of all our Brothers, we were able to forge a place within the storm made of realspace and create a flotilla from our damaged ships." Captain Nothasius looked from Dimitri to Castarius. "We pooled our resources and repaired this ship enough to leave the warp and give out a distress signal."

"Can we return to get the rest of the fleet?" Castarius asked, straight to the point.

"Our astropaths and navigator can guide a ship back to our brothers' location, yes," Nothasius said. "Do you have a ship powerful enough?"

"Yes, we do," Castarius replied.

Dimitri let out a sigh and walked over to where Jax was still talking on the radio. "Hey, just thought you'd want to know that Castarius has volunteered us for a suicide mission."

"Oh, cool," Jax said. "Manker's guys are in the middle of a firefight."

"Nice," Dimitri replied. He paused, thought about that, and then said, "Wait, what?"

_Penitent Evening_, Enginarium

Manker dropped into cover behind a stanchion and reloaded, the action as regular to him as breathing. Most men would have been unfamiliar with their new bionic arm after only having it for two days, but not Manker. For those two days, he had drilled himself relentlessly in using the arm in every combat movement he could think of, and now he could scarcely contemplate getting by with one made of sinew and flesh.

"Now, what the hell is going on down there?" Jax's voice cut in over the din of bolter and Impaler fire. "If they're Executioners, then try to get a ceasefire going."

Manker swung out of cover and downed another hostile with half a clip in its chest. As the Marine fell, Manker identified several lacerations across its armor, each one weeping pitch-black blood. Also, its face was sporting a set of horns, and a tongue as long as his forearm drapped from its mouth.

"They aren't Executioners anymore, sir," he said, tracking the room for more targets.

Several bolters opened up from higher-level catwalks, the rounds streaking down into the Dogs' positions and detonating against the deck and whatever cover was occupied. Down the skirmish line, one of the Dogs took a round in the visor and fell to the ground, his head turned to mush.

"Tubes up high," Manker ordered, dropping out of the killzone himself to ready his RPG.

Ten seconds later and the catwalks were aflame, rockets bursting against the corrupted Astartes' positions. A handful of the enemies fell from their perches. The ones that survived the fall were riddled where they lay, pinned to the deck under volleys of spike fire.

As the rest of the corrupted fled deeper into the hold, Manker stood up. "Squads, form up and move in. Find these heretics and put them down."

"What was that about heretics?" This new voice was that of Equerry Vlasna.

Manker suppressed a sigh as he replied. "The Executioners here in the engine room have been corrupted. We are dealing with them. It shouldn't take long. Manker out."

With that, he closed the line. Manker didn't have time to chat. There was work to be done.

_Penitent Evening_, Bridge

"You have men in the enginarium?" asked Captain Nothasius.

Jax and Dimitri turned to him from where they stood in the corner.

Dimitri answered. "We teleported two forces simultaneously. Auspex scans indicated that aside from the bridge, the engine room was the only place left capable of supporting life. We deemed it worth investigating."

"You should not have done that," Nothasius sighed. "During our translation out of warp, our Gellar field flickered. Some of our brothers…changed." He turned away. "We were too few to fight them, so we penned them in the enginarium."

"Well, now they're gonna be dead," Jax said. "Our boy Manker's got this one in the bag. Your Monster Marines are as good as dead. Trust me."

Nothasius nodded. "Very well, then. Perhaps it would be best if we were to leave now. Time is of the essence."

"Indeed," Dimitri agreed. He turned away and activated his commlink to the _Hammer's Fall_. "Teleportarium? This is Vlasna. Prepare the chamber for immediate recall, plus eight."

The reply came through a moment later. "Copy, Vlasna. We've locked your signal. Ave Imperator."

A dull hum rang through Dimitri's skull, and the smell of crackling ozone filtered through his helmet. Despite this, he still tried to respond.

"Ave Impera—"

A series of rapid flashes and one thunderclap later and he was back on the frigate, just finishing his salute.

"—tor," he said, then doubled over again to dry heave.

Jax clapped him on the back. "You alright there, Dimitri?"

"No," the Equerry struggled. "Throne, but I hate teleporting."

"Clear the pad!" sounded a deck officer, "Clear the pad! Secondary recall in ten!"

Jax led the way off the pad, followed by Nothasius, Castarius, Animal Mother, Dimitri and the rest of the uncorrupted Executioners. The chamber hummed to a peak and flashed again, the Kriegan company appearing instantly. Manker stood at their head, entangled with a Chaos Marine.

The creature flapped a tentacle on Manker's visor as the Lieutenant finished it off, wrenching its head off with the blade of his combat knife buried in the monster's neck.

When finished, he stood and cleaned the blade on his shoulder guard. "Kriegan Company, reporting."

Jax nudged Nothasius with his elbow. "See? Told ya."

(' ')

The grand doors to the bridge slid open with a groan. Brigham turned in his command throne to look and saw Jax entering, leading Castarius and another Astartes, this one in Terminator warplate. Vlasna followed them in, staggering despite his armor's stabilizers.

That last bit made Brigham smile. The poor kid would never become acclimated to that teleporter.

"Greetings," he said.

"Hey," Jax replied. "Meet Captain Nothasius. He's gonna explain what's up and what we gotta do."

Brigham lowered his throne as the strategium lit up before him, the hololith flickering to life in pinpoints of green light. The command council assembled around it, with Manker and Menshaw arriving seconds behind everyone else.

"So, what the hell happened over there?" asked the Ratling.

Manker's reply was quick and dry. "There was a Chaos infestation. We purged it."

"Ah," Menshaw said, "Well then, good for you."

Jax stared the both of them into silence. "Okay, listen to the Captain."

Nothasius called up a rendering of the current warp environment, relayed up to the bridge by the ship's Navigators and, through several cogitators, the usual swirl of incomprehensible color was made into something resembling sense. With this view, even a layman could manage to make some sense out of the paths in the immaterium.

"Now then, this is the warp as it stands," he said, operating the controls with a thick, adamantium-gauntleted hand, "And this is where the rest of my brothers have hidden."

The hololith showed a space in the twine ball, a gap in the madness. Aside from the words 'unavailable data' in scrolling gothic text, the void was completely vacant.

"This is realspace tucked within the warp," Nothasius explained. "This is where my Chapter has taken refuge, hollowing out the madness with the force of their will channeled through our Librarians."

"That works?" Jax asked.

"Yes."

"Huh. Learn something new every day."

The Brother-Captain nodded. "In order to retrieve them, we will need a strong vessel to penetrate this void and evacuate my brothers from their own entrapments and drop back out."

"We can use the teleporters for extraction," Manker suggested.

"No," Nothasius said, "There is too much interference within the immaterium."

Jax folded his arms with the faint tings of his steel forearms hitting his armored chestpiece. "That leaves us with Valkyries. Castarius, how we looking on that front?"

"All craft have been repaired and refitted." Castarius looked at Nothasius. "What vessels are trapped, exactly?"

"That is largely irrelevant, as none are operational any longer," answered the Captain, "All ships have become part of a larger flotilla centered on _Gallows Superior_." When it was clear the rest of the group was confused by that term, Nothasius said, "Our Battle Barge."

"Anything else I should know about?" Jax asked. He didn't look amused.

"Yes," Nothasius replied. "Though the location of our fleet is technically realspace, it has been surrounded by the warp for a long time. Daemons have begun to lay siege to the flotilla. If we are to retrieve anyone, we will be forced to fight through them."

"Oh, that's just wonderful," Menshaw muttered. "Do I get hazard pay for this?"

Everyone ignored him.

Jax looked over at Dimitri. "Okay, so what do we got for fighting demons?"

Dimitri thought about it for a second, then said, "You, I suppose."

"Me?"

"Yes. As a saint, you could bless our soldiers, equipment, all of it. Throne, you could bless the ammunition if you so chose," Dimitri said, "And I'll bet those warp spawn would have trouble getting near you without dying a very painful death."

Jax grinned. "I bet you're right. Okay, so we got the demon thing dealt with. Any other problems?"

Brigham spoke up next. "I'm not one for jumping blindly into anything. An operation like that has too many risks. Brother-Captain, do you have auger scans of the interior of this void pocket?"

"Yes, I can provide those," Nothasius replied.

No one said anything for a moment. Jax broke the silence.

"Okay, then, that's it. Break for your own jobs. Nothasius: get whatever info wherever you need it. Castarius: triple-check those Valkyries. I hate 'em as is, and I don't want 'em falling out from under us. Brigham: do your thing. Manker, Menshaw: prep a mixed platoon. I want the best of what we've got. Dimitri: you're with me on this blessing thing." Jax looked at each of them in turn. "Clear?"

"Clear," they all returned in unison.

"Glad to hear it. Break."

**Author's Note: Still banging away at this saga, but it should be done a little later than usual. Later as in there's another chapter to it, not later like I'm going to miss a lot of updates. I can assure you that the Confederate will be updated on schedule through at least chapter 31, mainly because that's how far I've written.**

**Yes, I keep things withheld, but only because I want some slack in case I can't get something out one week. School-and Street Fighter-can get in the way of things. So can building an entire Ork army from scratch...**

**Also, please tell me what you're liking/disliking. I really like this saga. In fact, I think these chapters-especially the ones coming up-are the best I've ever written. I think you're really going to like what's coming up, but I've got no clue, really, unless you let me know. **

**So in clear words: write a review. The Battle Saint demands it.**

**Later.  
**


	29. Chapter 29: ExGambit: Into the Warp

"I grow tired of this."

Brother Garadus didn't look up from his bolter. It wouldn't do to deign Cyrius with a glance, lest the lad be further encouraged to gripe. The scout was always pacing and complaining, every time they made a trip, every time they went outside. Hell, even when they stayed in, he complained. And paced.

"When are we going to go? We've been sitting in this hanger for hours! When are we going to go? Has the Captain said when we're going to go yet?"

"No," Garadus replied, still working on his bolter, "he hasn't. I suspect we're waiting for the Battle Saint to finish his blessings."

Cyrius's boots stilled. "What? What blessings?"

Behind the frowning visage of his helm, Garadus smiled. "The mandatory blessings. Before going back into the warp, the Battle Saint is going to bless every soldier and piece of equipment in the task force."

"I'd rather not be blessed."

Garadus maglocked his bolter to his thigh and stood up. "I doubt we will. After all, we aren't going on the reclamation mission."

As Garadus started out across the hot deck, Cyrius followed him. "What are we doing?"

"The Captain has something special in mind," Garadus replied. "We will remain on this ship, far from the battle."

It took Cyrius a moment to catch on. When he did, a slow grin spread across his young features. "Sounds like fun."

Garadon merely nodded.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 29: Executioner's Gambit: Part 3: Into the Warp_

Castarius looked up as the door to his armory ground open to see the Battle Saint and his Equerry as they walked through. Seeing them, he offered a curt nod of greeting before returning to his work: refitting an Impaler with a fresh barrel. After so much firing during the battle against the necrons, the weapons were stripping barrels like nothing he had ever seen. After years and years of storage, the rifles' components had begun to degrade. No matter how high-tech they were, the Impalers were still vulnerable to aging.

Castarius was working on a solution for that problem. In the case of the barrels, the fix included a crystalline matrix spread around the interior of the barrel to reinforce the rifling. It would also strengthen the rifle overall, keeping it stable during firing and much more effective as a makeshift melee weapon.

Engrossed as he was in his work, it took him a moment to notice that Vlasna was standing next to him, his CMC armor's reactor pack humming on a lower setting.

"Equerry Vlasna," he said with a nod. "How may I help you?"

"No real way to help," Dimitri said, "Jax is just making his rounds. He's finally made it to the rifles, so…"

Castarius followed Dimitri's gesture. The Battle Saint was standing in front of a rack of rifles, throwing water on them and shouting, 'I bless ye gun!' repeatedly.

"You should have seen what he did to the ammo," Dimitri said.

"Does that work?" the Techmarine asked.

Dimitri shrugged. "Well, there isn't really a defined way to bless something, but so far the things he's blessed have glowed a little."

Castarius closed his eyes for a moment and felt the world around him through the micro-sensor ports built into his skin. When he found what he was looking for, he opened his eyes.

"The machine spirits have been rejuvenated," he said plainly, "It is working."

"Huh."

"Does it work on humans?" Castarius asked as he went back to his work, "That is to say, have they shown a positive reaction?"

"Menshaw said it tingled all over his body," Dimitri replied.

"That is not a difficult accomplishment," Castarius said. "His 'whole body' isn't much."

Dimitri stared at him for a moment. Castarius could feel the man's eyes boring into him, and knew what was coming.

"Castarius, was that a joke?"

A thin smile tugged at the edges of the Techmarine's lips. "Maybe."

(' ')

Jax and Dimitri were riding the thruway back to the hot deck. It took five minutes before the latter finally spoke up.

"Jax, have you ever heard Castarius tell a joke?"

That got a laugh out of the Confederate. "Now _there's_ a joke."

"I'll take that as a no," Dimitri said, leaning back on the railing in his armor.

Jax looked over at him. "Why you mention it?"

"Well, while you were blessing the rifles, we got to talking and he made one."

"You remember it?"

Dimitri shrugged. "Just something about Menshaw."

"He's a midget," Jax chuckled.

"Indeed he is," Dimitri said. Why the hell had he brought this up with Jax? "Anyway, I think we're about done with the blessings. We've done all the troops and equipment, and Manker's got everyone etching wards onto their armor."

"Yeah, I think we're 'bout done," Jax agreed.

"No youse not," said a voice, "I'z gotta get me blessin'."

Both men turned as one to see Gort standing behind them. The ork was slouched over, snazzgun held loose in one paw.

"_You_ want a blessing?" Dimitri asked.

Gort wore a very serious face; he had even closed his mouth. "I look like I'z jokin'?"

"No, I just didn't think that you—"

Jax put a hand on Dimitri's shoulder, bringing his speech to a stop. "Yeah, Gort, I'll bless you. Now stand still."

Gort very seriously spread his legs and squared himself with Jax. When the Confederate brought out his jug of holy water, the ork opened his mouth wide, showing his impressive under bite complete with canines.

This only gave Jax a moment of pause before he went ahead with the blessing.

"With the light of the God-Emperor, I bless ye!" he shouted.

He then dumped the remnants of his water down Gort's gullet. The Humie Luva gulped it down without pause and burped in the aftermath.

"Lotsa thanks, Boss. That's some real flash blessin' water."

"Damn right," Jax said, scratching Gort behind the ears. "Now get going ya silly sumbitch."

As Gort trotted off down the thruway, Dimitri said, "He drank it." He looked up at Jax. "Why did he drink it?"

Jax shrugged. "I ain't got the faintest. C'mon, let's get this show on the road."

The Bridge

Higgins listened to the deckhand before relaying the information to Brigham. "Lord, Captain Nothasius has reported successful integration between his Navigator and our own. Immaterium is calm."

The Captain of _Hammer's Fall_ looked down from his command throne and spoke. "Go ahead, First Officer. Take us in."

Lieutenant Higgins turned to the rest of the bridge. "All hands: prepare for warp translation! Vox commands to the enginarium and prep shift cogitators! Augury station, status!"

"Warp portal materializing off bow!"

"Helm, set us on a heading and transfer all control to the Navigatorium!" Higgins barked, pulling his pocket chron out by the chain, "I want translation in t-minus fifteen! Make it happen!"

The bridge spun into overdrive, with deckhands and lower officers skittering to and fro. Around them, the massive bulk of the _Hammer's Fall_ groaned softly as it accelerated. The vibration of the deck, such a constant in shipboard life, kicked noticeably up in pitch.

From his throne, Brigham watched beneath a furrowed brow. This concept of a pocket of realspace within the immaterium bothered him. It was an unknown factor, and one that he had never experienced before. He had no idea how to translate in or out of it, no idea of the hazards his ship would face.

Not knowing was the worst thing. Not knowing something and yet going through with an action went against all his learned instincts as a shipmaster. It felt wrong.

On the forward occulus feed, the portal grew larger, eldritch tendrils snaking from its chaotic maw.

"Here we go," he muttered.

(' ')

As far as warp jumps went, Dimitri Vlasna would remember this as one of the worst.

Jumping into a dimension most aptly described as hell was never going to be an easy task. That said, to Dimitri this felt a little excessive.

Strapped as he was into a grav couch in the command Valkyrie in the Dogs' hangar, the groans of the ship were largely muffled by the thick padded walls surrounding him. Even with that soundproofing, however, the stresses of the _Hammer's Fall_ still sounded like thunder; a continuous stream of thunderclaps that threatened to tear the hull open and void the ship.

The wailing went up in pitch, a banshee call that assailed all of Dimitri's senses—so loud that it turned his eyes red, so loud that he tasted blood, so loud that he could smell the warp oozing into the ship.

A channel opened to the bridge, signified by a blinking icon in his HUD. Brigham was saying something about hull stresses and breaking through to the pocket. Dimitri couldn't hear him. His brain was bleeding.

"Jax!" he screamed. His voice failed to even reach his own ears, but he kept it up. "We're about to break through!"

The Confederate's face was set in a determined grimace, his white steeled fingers gripping his Impaler in a ready stance. Seeing this, Dimitri ceased worrying; whatever happened, Jax would be ready.

Next to Jax, Gort was howling incoherently, his feet beating against the deckplate with unrestrained glee. The ork was going mad at the prospect of the fight to come; his elation only ramped up by the feeling of immanent death flowing through his body.

Captain Nothasius and Castarius, both the men's faces impassable behind their crimson-lensed helms, showed no signs of any emotion at all. It was as if the turmoil that surrounded them all just didn't exist to the two Astartes. They didn't move, they didn't shake, they didn't speak; they simply rode it out.

The ship bucked again. Somewhere, out beyond the Valkyrie's hull, a plate of steel was shorn in two like sheet metal, the sound reverberating like the death scream of a feral world beastman. In it's wake, a chorus of wails assailed the senses. The sound was that of insanity unleashed and given physical form, a torrent of raw panic, anger, lust and ecstasy woven into a symphony of madness.

Somewhere, the hull was breached, and the warp was trying to get in.

Dimitri prayed.

(' ')

"Throne of the God-Emperor!" Brigham shouted above the din. "What in the hell is going on with my ship! Higgins, answer me!"

In the augury pit, a console exploded in purple flame, engulfing a team of servitors and one menial deck officer. Higgins threw himself back from the explosion, the backlash having seared the right side of his uniform jacket through to his skin. In anger, the first officer pulled the jacket off and cast it aside with a curse before reporting.

"Sections are voiding, sir! We've lost contact with spinal gunnery decks five and six, and several tertiary broadside arrays are going silent!"

Brigham uttered an improvised but nonetheless vulgar phrase and slammed his fist into his throne's arm vox. "Navigatorium, how close are we to breakthrough?"

The response was instantaneous. "Close, lord captain. We are entering the thickest resistance around the realspace pocket now." The voice was male, belonging to Ulrich, then, the brother of the ship's sibling Navigators. "We'll be through in three minutes at maximum."

Without giving a response, Brigham snapped the vox off and kept bellowing orders. "Helm, keep the link with the Navigators strong. We'll be through in a moment. Higgins: mobilize security detachments to purge those voided sections. I won't have daemons crawling around inside my vessel."

"Yes sir," Higgins replied, pulling his service autopistol from its holster. "I'll lead the purgings myself."

"No," said a new voice, "You won't."

As if in reverence to the newcomer, the turbulence ceased and the _Hammer's Fall_ coasted easily out of the warp and into the clear. On the forward occulus the pict-sensors were sending back images of a hollowed cavern within the empyrean, a space of pure void in the middle of a roiling malady of colors.

Brigham didn't see it. He was too busy staring at the man on his bridge.

Inquisitor Tripe stood a full head and a half taller than normal, his dark inquisitorial great coat draped across shoulders further broadened by the CMC-300 power armor he wore. The armor was black as night, the color only broken by bronzed lining around the edges of his plates and a golden 'I' emblazoned upon the chest. In one hand he clutched an Impaler. The other held a chainsword.

"I will lead the purgings," he stated. "Now then, don't you have some Valkyries to launch?"

At his words, the bridge snapped back into motion. Seconds later the Dogs of War were spaceborne, making way for the Executioner flotilla.

(' ')

As Dimitri stood from his grav couch, he felt relief flood through him in the form of twenty cc's of stimulants pumped directly into his bloodstream. The chemicals clogged his bleeding head and began reconstructing his damaged eardrums, healing all minor wounds with the efficiency of an autosurgeon.

Stims were one of the easier pieces of shadow world tech to be copied. Combat drugs were commonplace throughout the Imperium, but none were so refined as those employed by Jax's kind. It had taken time, but the Mechanicus Biologis had managed to duplicate most of them, albeit at extreme cost.

Needless to say, no unit aside from the Dogs would be given access to these chemicals for centuries to come.

Dimitri moved into the cockpit and leaned over the shoulder of the servitor slaved to the control console, peering out the forward window.

The size of the realspace pocket was difficult to gauge in any manner. His eyes were betrayed by the horizon-distorting properties of the warp swirl around them, and his suit's instruments faired just as well. According to his scanner, the distance between the Valkyrie's cockpit and the nearest cloud wall was sixteen kilometers and twenty-eight feet at the same time.

Feeling his head begin to spin, Dimitri instead focused on the flotilla. The Executioners' vessels were clumped at the heart of the bubble, their damaged hulls linked together by a series of rag-tag causeways. In places, hulls of two ships touched directly, held together by massive welds to create permanent junctures between the wreck-habs.

"Where the hell do we land?" Dimitri muttered.

The pilot servitor looked up, wondering if his words had been a command. Dimitri told it to get back to work.

"There," Nothasius pointed a gauntleted hand past Dimitri's head. "Make landfall there."

Surprised that the Captain had moved so quietly in his Terminator plate, Dimitri nonetheless tracked the Astartes's finger to a point halfway back along the spine of the flotilla's primary structure, the battle barge _Gallows Superior_. A gash marred the ship's hull in that location, allowing for a makeshift hanger of sorts.

Dimitri marked it and passed the information on to Jax, who confirmed the plan and relayed incursion orders to the rest of the Valkyries.

Manker was the first to respond. "Understood. Kriegan Company moving in on point. Ave Imperator."

Jax cut in again. "Damnit, Manker, I didn't tell you to take point!"

"Should we fall back?"

"Well," Jax sighed, "No. Keep pushing. We'll follow you in."

Three Valkyries pulled ahead, making way to the flotilla on flaming engines. As they sped away, Dimitri turned to the Astartes veteran next to him.

"Captain, I believe your brothers will be saved."

His face unreadable behind the Terminator helm, Captain Nothasius nodded.

(' ')

In the depths of the _Hammer's Fall_, a squad of Executioners stalked the decks. Led by Sergeant Tersus, the squad numbered five in all, notably consisting of Brother Garadus and the young scout, Cyrius.

The Executioners moved in silence, the only sounds that of their quiet tread and the ever-present thrum of active Aquilla armor. These noises, soft as they were, were enough to deter most of the menials living in these lesser decks. The few mortals curious enough to stick their necks out for a closer look were dealt with efficiently, dispatched by way of combat blades.

Cyrius walked point, scanning the darkness, his sight as clear as if it were day. Though he still lacked the full genehancements of a true blooded Executioner, and thus was not privy to the added accoutrements such as night-sight, Cyrius had his own way around the problem. His eyes were gifted with powers beyond what simple geneseed could give him.

Something scurried ahead, veering off the gangway as Cyrius approached. The scout could smell the mortal's sweat, could almost taste its fear, but he did not pursue. Alas, there were more pressing matters at hand.

Cyrius held up a hand. Instantly, the rest of the squad answered the all-stop. Sergeant Tersus gestured and Brother Reven moved forward to Cyrius's position. Ducking down, Reven attached a discus to the support stanchion left of the gangway and primed it with a whispered prayer to the device's machine spirit. When he was done, Cyrius continued forward, dragging the squad with him.

Behind, the melta-charge's ready light blinked in the darkness.

(' ')

Manker was boots-down before anyone else, his rifle up and panning the corridor even as his leg servos boosted him from his impact-induced crouch. He found his first target the instant he was upright—a daemonic creature crouched in an access corridor—and was firing as the second Kriegan was just jumping from the hovering Valkyrie.

The Impaler discharged in the voided corridor, its reports silent save for the reverberations the recoil sounded in his helmet. The daemon came apart under the consecrated spikes, its unholy form splitting detonating into several flowing pieces that tumbled in the null-gravity.

"Contact," he reported over the commlink as another daemon charged into the hallway, followed by another, and another, and another. Manker laid into them with abandon, his rifle bucking in the silence. "Lots of contacts. Kriegan Company is engaging."

As more of his soldiers landed behind him, Manker began to press forward, downing the monsters at close range. Spent casings tumbled from his rifle, bouncing around the corridor from wall-to-wall, their momentum eternal. His boots moved forward with a steady ker-chunk, ker-chunk as the mag-soles adhered to the bloodied decking.

A bloodletter rushed Manker, its hellblade slashing for his face. The Lieutenant dodged the blow and crushed the creature's head with his fist, driving his glove through the scaled flesh between its swooping horns. He felt the flesh beneath his gauntlet boil to have touched the unholy creature. The feeling was disconcerting.

A servitor's voice broke into the comm. "Valkyrie Two breaking off."

"Understood," Manker replied, shaking his hand and reciting a litany within his mind to ward off the corruption. _The Emperor protects, the Emperor protects, the Emperor protects._ "Valkyrie Three, move in to offload."

"Valkyrie Three disgorging troops."

More Kriegans poured into the rent in the battle barge's hull, securing the corridor intersection landing zone with Manker. As more chaos beasts horded into the area, so did more Kriegans, until finally the daemons broke off.

As the creatures fled, Manker allowed himself a rare, grim smile of satisfaction. So, even the ruinous hordes lacked the mettle to stand in attrition against the steel of the Death Korps.

The last Valkyrie dropped its payload, and with it, the Battle Saint and his retinue. Jax strode down the corridor, looking over the destroyed bodies of the daemons that floated like so much voided garbage, their multicolored lifeblood staining the bulkheads.

"Damn fine work, Manker," the Battle Saint voxed. "Damn fine."

Manker merely nodded, unused to the praise. He relaxed when Jax turned his attention to the two Astartes in their midst, thankful to be out of the spotlight.

"Well, here we are Nothasius," he said. "Lead the way."

**Author's Note: Sorry for the lateness. According to my timezone, there are still twenty minutes left in the weekend as I write this, so I guess I'm making my deadline. Or my deadzone, if you will. Other stories have been worked on this weekend, so if anyone cares, there will be new Brain Dead stuff up by next weekend.**

**Again, reviews are appreciated. Of course, you already know that. You've reached Chapter 29, after all. You must have noticed this craving of mine.**

**Now then, I need to pass out for school tomorrow.  
**


	30. Chapter 30: ExGambit: The ExGambit

A harsh bang, throaty like the roar of a primal beast in the midst of a blood lust, purifying like a thundering chorus's crescendo echoing in a cathedral, deafening like the godblast of a Titan's cannon brought to an infantry level; the bolter's report was distinctive. It was all these, brought all these things to mind with each discharge. It was the Imperium—mankind's will—condensed in every booming report.

The Impaler didn't boom. It wasn't like a primal beast. It wasn't purifying like a holy chorus. It was only deafening in massed numbers, and it was not the condensed will of mankind in gunfire form. No, the Impaler's report was like a great tear, a rip in the air, drawn out for as long as one held its trigger, the noise signifying one thing and one thing only:

Death.

An individual spike from an Impaler was every bit as deadly as a bolt, but for a different reason. While a bolt exploded the target into fleshy bits, the Impaler was equal parts more efficient and in many cases gorier. Instead of such a grandiose method of killing, the Impaler spike ripped right through an opponent, in one side and out the other, typically sucking the internal organs of the foe out with it, simply from the speed of its passing.

Inquisitor Tripe realized this immediately upon unloading his first live round into a corrupted deckhand. The spike punched through the man's midriff and pounded into the bulkhead beyond, taking with it his stomach and a string of intestines. Blood splashed across the deck as the rating fell to his knees before Tripe.

With the last breaths of his life, the man cursed Tripe's soul, damning him with the names of the fell powers that had corrupted his flesh merely an hour before.

The Inquisitor shot him in the skull, nailing his corpse to the floor before moving on, followed by a platoon of security armsmen.

Behind his polarized visor, Tripe smirked. The power of this armor system was intoxicating. The thrum of its fusion pack, the unstoppable thudding tread of each step, the efficiency of its tracking systems—all factors contributing to an overall feeling of invincibility.

Without breaking stride, he put another trio of corrupted down for good, pinning their destroyed forms to the door to which they retreated. His smirk became a smile.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 30: Executioner's Gambit: Part 4: The Executioner's Gambit_

The corridors of _Gallows Superior _were at once familiar and alien to Castarius. At first, everything seemed the same as when he had served here as a scout: the layout, the stanchion positioning, the ornately wrought deck gratings, the adjacent chambers. Even the barracks was still recognizable.

But still, everything had changed. The constant feeling of the battle barge's great engines thrumming underfoot—the literal beating of its machine-heart—was absent, leaving a tremendous silence in its place. The lightstrips were dim, powered only by auxiliary generatoriums, and cast the halls in a gloom.

And then there were the daemons.

Ahead, the forward echelons of the Dogs of War force stopped again. Weapons snapped up and calls came back down the vox of additional contacts ahead. Moments later those calls became firing declarations, and the corridor was filled with the rip-tear of Impaler fire and howling daemons.

Castarius pushed his way forward, firing up into the vaulted ceiling as winged monstrosities swooped out of the gantries to assault the penned-in Dogs. His bolter boomed in the close confines of the hall and several of the creatures ceased to exist. Seconds later, more of the Dogs fired upward, spikes filling the air in efficient, overlapping fields of fire that scythed the harpies down.

When he reached the front of the formation, he found Nothasius and Jax standing side-by-side, their combined firepower thinning out the daemonic horde. Castarius added his bolter to the fray, taking select shots at specific targets. A bloodletter ended at the waist from his first burst, followed by his kin shortly thereafter.

"Okay," Jax shouted in warning, "Goin' hot!"

The Dogs polarized their visors to the maximum setting, and Castarius averted his eyes. Nothasius, not knowing what was coming, was blinded momentarily in the aftermath of Jax's coup de grace.

When the purifying brilliance had faded, there was nothing left in the hallway aside from ash and the smell of burning warpskin.

Jax lowered his left palm and signaled over the vox. "Clear front!"

"Clear rear!" came another voice.

"Clear middle!"

"Good!" the Confederate replied, "Keep moving, double time! Let's get to that bridge!"

Nothasius pushed forward without word, and Castarius followed. Behind them, the Dogs of War broke into a jog.

(' ')

Dimitri caught up with Jax a moment later, reloading as he jogged. The Confederate was in fine spirits for being surrounded by daemons in the bowels of a hostile vessel, and by the looks of his grinning face, he was not intending on hiding that fact.

"Hey, Dimitri," he greeted. "How's it going?"

"Better than expected," Dimitri replied.

He wasn't lying; he had truly expected this operation to last less than fifteen minutes, ending with all of them devoured by the scions of the Ruinous Powers. Thankfully, that had yet to happen, but the mission was still young.

"Good deal."

"Jax, does Nothasius bother you?"

"Not any more than any other Assturd," Jax replied. He turned to regard Dimitri. "Why you ask?"

Dimitri frowned. "He's just been abnormally quiet. Normally, guys like him are excited to be doing something like this. Why the hell isn't he cheering?"

"Man, I don't blame him," Jax said. "There ain't much around here worth cheering for."

"Then there's the vox line…"

That got Jax's attention. "The what?"

"Nothasius has had a vox channel open the entire time we've been aboard," Dimitri said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "It's encrypted, and he changes the encryption each time he uses it, but all the same, it's there."

Jax was silent a moment, thinking on the issue. Finally, he reached a decision and popped onto the all-unit channel.

"Listen up, people, I want you to keep an eye on Nothasius. He gets out of line or tries anything overly corruptsome and you put a clip of spikes in his face, clear?"

A round of acknowledgments sounded from the Dogs. Contented, Jax nodded.

"Okay, there. Good?"

Dimitri nodded. "Good."

"Now let's keep moving. We gotta lot of ground to cover 'fore we get to—"

A roar filled the corridor, an unmistakable war bellow composed of nothing but wrathful noise. Eventually it dissembled into words, harsh around the edges but still within comprehension. They chilled Dimitri to his core.

"_Hell is upon you!"_

(' ')

The words spurred Castarius into action, whipping his bolter up and panning around. The Dogs had emptied out into a larger commons area, located just below the bridge. If Castarius looked up, he could even see the raised command floor high above them, suspended in the grand dome on cables thick as tank treads.

The call wasn't human. No, it had been more than that. Corrupted, but still more than human corruption.

Traitors. The word hit Castarius in the gut. Traitor Astartes were onboard.

Had the remnants of the Chapter already succumbed to the wiles of the warp, despite having only been without Nothasius's crew for a day or so in their time? It seemed hardly possible, but horrible though the prospect was, Castarius had to consider it.

Two seconds after the howling challenge, Castarius turned to Nothasius for advice. A second later, Nothasius put two bolts into Castarius's chest and slammed his power fist into the younger Astartes's gut. The Techmarine flew across the space and slammed into the ground, blood splashing from his armor.

Seven seconds after that, a full two companies of the Executioners Chapter fell on the Dogs of War, bolters barking and chainblades roaring.

Instantly, everything went to hell. The slaughter began.

_Hammer's Fall_, Lower Decks

"Clear." Reven stepped back from the final stanchion, the melta charge attached.

"Acknowledged," said Sergeant Tersus. He cocked his head to one side and signaled into the vox, "Charges planted, lord."

"Good," replied the thick voice of what had once been Captain Nothasius. "Move to a safe distance and detonate. Reinforcements will be on their way immediately."

Tersus acknowledged and started back along an access corridor, climbing a staircase four at a time with his giant's stride. His squad followed him, lugging their armored forms up the gangway with ease. At the rear was Cyrius, moving slower without the aide of true power armor, but not quite lagging behind.

When they had cleared the mined deck by three decks, Tersus flipped his gauntlet switch and blink-clicked a rune open.

An explosion rocked the ship as the lowest decks of the frigate's starboard side were engulfed in flame. Bulkheads buckled and disintegrated, the hull breached. Whole sections were voided instantly. A total of four hundred crewmembers, menials and servitors were spaced in a matter of seconds, their lives snuffed out before they could comprehend the reality of their deaths.

Cyrius barely managed to seal the stairwell's void hatch before he, too, was sucked into nothingness.

The job done, he turned back to his squad. "I suppose you thought that quite funny."

"As a matter of fact," Tersus said, "I did."

_Hammer's Fall_, Bridge

The voiding of the lower decks was felt on the bridge as a minor tremor, little more than an irregularity in the warp engines. Most officers would have dismissed it as just that, having not the foresight to hear it for what it was. But Brigham wasn't captain of the ship of the Battle Saint because he fell under the same category as 'most officers'.

"Something on my ship has exploded," he stated. "Why?"

The words sent the bridge into overdrive as officers poured over cogitators, examining the ship deck-by-deck, checking each deck by vox call-in. After seven minutes, Higgins reported.

"Lowest deck, starboard side has been voided, sir."

Brigham frowned. "We're under attack."

"How?" Higgins looked confused. "Our shields are up. There's no way enemy fire could have—"

"That's because it came from within," Brigham snapped. "Contact the inquisitor. Inform him that we have more pressing matters at hand than rouge warp-spawn."

"Contact, starboard side," droned a servitor. "Incoming single ships."

"On screen," Brigham ordered.

The occulus crackled to life, pict-imagers showing a horde of dots swarming from the flotilla. They maneuvered quickly, with quick spurts of flame to guide them across the expanse. Brigham recognized them immediately.

"Throne," he muttered. "Assault Marines. The bastards are going to board us!"

_Gallows Superior_, the Heart of the Flotilla

Isolated as it was from the rest of the theatre, the battle for the underbridge of the battle barge _Gallows Superior_ occurred in bloody seclusion. The details of it, flashing by in eternities for those involved, would never be known outside the confines of the fight itself except in stories, and many of those were exaggerated.

In the end, what each man involved would remember was the sheer level of carnage laid out in such a short time.

200 Traitor Marines met 250 Dogs of War. When all was done, only a hundred of the latter force walked away under their own power. The rest were dead on the floor, their armor split under the fury of the Executioners.

For those hundred, it was a fight they would never forget.

(' ')

Castarius awoke to the sound of a melee. His internal chronometer told him he had been unconscious for less than thirty seconds. His bioaugury told him his ribplate had been shattered, in addition to his armor's chest component. Trauma done to the black carapace beneath his skin layer was detected. It made for a difficult time moving in his armor.

Quickly, he rerouted several of his mental functions through alternate correlative pathways, putting ill-advised but necessary additional strain on his auxiliary attachment ports.

A Dog landed on him, the man's torso opened from neck to groin by a chainblade. The sudden impact brought Castarius back into the moment, and very quickly he realized three important facts.

One: Nothasius had betrayed him.

Two: The Executioners were heretics.

Three: He needed to kill Nothasius and every Executioner within reach. Badly.

Pushing the dead Kriegan Dog to the side, Castarius, Techmarine of Mars, stood and charged headlong into the melee, bellowing in rage.

(' ')

Jax backhanded a snarling Marine off balance and pumped him full of forty-some-odd spikes, drilling him back into the crowd. Jax lost sight of the Marine, but that didn't really bother him. There were plenty more to go around.

He was working on breaking one's neck when Dimitri fought his way over, blasting at point-blank range with his rifle. His Equerry shot the Astartes Jax was grappling with, a five-burst of spikes right to the small of the back.

The Executioner howled in agony, the sound emerging from its breathe grille as a strained, metallic-tinged cry. Its struggling against Jax momentarily ceased, and in that moment, Jax ceased the initiative, gripping the fallen Astartes's helm with both hands.

The ceramite contorted under the pressure. The reddened eye lenses shattered and blood poured forth in rivulets. The Executioner's neck wrenched around with a slick pop, its skull crushed and its vertebrae pulverized. Its struggles ceased.

"Jax, move!" Dimitri shouted, his rifle blaring.

Jax rolled off the armored corpse. He sprang up just as Dimitri's target stumbled into view, its chest filled with spikes. The creature—for the word Astartes gave it too much credit—roared and fired its bolter. The explosive rounds drove Dimitri back into the melee, and he disappeared from sight.

Jax beat the creature with his rifle butt, cracking its oozing helmet and shattering its cranium. He put it down for good with the rest of his clip, finishing the twitching body even as it fell.

"Shit on a cracker," he muttered, reloading. Cycling through the comm., Jax bellowed the first order that would spell the salvation of his men in this fight. "Dogs! Form up on my locator! Get some order to this mosh pit! Dimitri, where the hell are ya?"

(' ')

Dimitri heard Jax's message, but was too preoccupied to reply, embroiled as he was in a tooth-and-nail fight against one of the opposing monstrosities. Dimitri fell under the full weight of the Executioner and the two thrashed about on the floor. With a grunt of effort, Dimitri forced the corrupted Astartes's head back and buried his combat knife in its throat. Blood, thick and black with corruption, spurted across his visor.

The Marine screamed curses into his face, its voice low and burbling with the ooze running through its punctured throat. The inhuman words were painful to hear, and Dimitri forced them out of his mind as he wrenched the knife around the creature's neck. Bones snapped and the curses became a high-pitched wail before the Astartes's helmed head fell clean off.

Dimitri knocked it aside, but didn't stand up immediately. A boot hit him in the arm and another Dog fell across him, tripped and felled by an Executioner with a chainsword. The Marine's blade whirred and cut into the Dog's chestplate, breaking through with a sickening grind as it churned the contents of the man's chest cavity across the surroundings in thick spatters.

Dimitri reached for his rifle where it had fallen to the side, but realized already that it was too late; the Executioner was already turning to him, the rumbling sword in its grasp dripping blood. In a moment, Dimitri Vlasna would be dead.

Another chainblade howled and sparks burst from the Executioner. A blade, adamantine teeth spitting chunks of gore and broken ceramite like a fountain. The Executioner fell to the wayside and Manker dislodged his blade from its back before flowing into a firing stance to down another onrusher with a burst of spikes to the head.

He looked down at Dimitri, face impassable behind his tinted visor. "The Battle Saint requests your presence," he said.

(' ')

Dimitri wasn't the only one regrouping with Jax. The rest of the Dogs aboard the _Gallows Superior_ began to form up around the Confederate, their Impalers putting down any Executioners that stood between themselves and their commanding officer. As they grouped in tighter, there was a moment of reprieve where the chaos soldiers broke to regroup for another coordinated attack. In that moment, every remaining Impaler turned outward and punished the fallen Marines for their attempts.

Dimitri saw his opportunity for a moment of solace and convened with Jax, shouting to be heard over the gunfire, howls and shouted commands.

"Jax, we need to reestablish contact with Brigham!" he shouted.

"Already tried that!" Jax replied. "Ain't nothing getting past this hull! Something's jamming us!"

And then the moment was gone, the Executioners descending again. Almost immediately, lifesigns across the board began dropping as Dogs started to fall.

At the head of the Dog formation, Kriegans dropped like flies under the onslaught of chainblade-wielding assault troops. Their hardened armor mattered little in matters of close combat, where the sheer ferocity of the Chaos foe put the more ranged Dog on the backfoot.

Dimitri cursed. This was a massacre.

_Hammer's Fall_, Lower Decks

Brother Sergeant Tersus greeted the Chapter Master as he strode into the first air-filled compartment above the voided decks. "Lord, we stand ready."

The Chapter Master looked down at Tersus, fixing him with his coal-black gaze. Behind his hulking frame, more of the Executioners filed in from the pocket outside, their assault packs whining with latent thruster energy.

"Hmm," the Chapter Master mused, his tone a basal rumble. "I see that, Sergeant. Take your squad ahead. Lead us to the bridge. We shall claim this vessel as one force, unbreakable, in the name of Chaos."

Tersus saluted and led his team away, fighting to keep a grin from his face. He had been chosen to lead. Him, Tersus. Not one of the Chapter Master's elite raptor vanguard, or one of the older sergeants, but him.

Truly, the powers shone on him this day.

"Cyrius, take point!" he bellowed. "Brothers, quickly! There is blood yet to spill!"

Squad Tersus, brought to a fervor by its enthusiastic namesake, powered through the corridors of the _Hammer's Fall_. At the lead, Cyrius took corners in a deep lean, light boots banging the deck with each downward stride. He bounded up a staircase, the rest of his squad brothers following him, and tore down the next hallway, his bolter sweeping menials out of the way.

This was perfect. He would have them at the bridge in moments, and then… then he would get his power armor.

Cyrius's life ended then, his body detonating from the direct impact of a rocket propelled grenade fired from the end of the corridor. He never saw his death coming, and he died with thoughts of shiny armor in his mind.

Tersus saw Cyrius's body explode across the bulkhead and tried to stop, his boots skidding on the deck as he slowed, but in the end it was futile. Four short men in rotund power armor rolled into the hall ahead and righted themselves, rifles up as they stabilized.

A rip sounded from down one of their weapons, followed quickly by another, and Tersus felt pain filling his body from innumerable impacts. He fell to the ground as the fire shifted to Garadon. Garadon's body shook like a ragdoll under shots from conflicting angles before he dropped alongside Tersus.

Reven and Malkus actually managed to stop, the former even letting off a handful of bolts, before finally going down. Tersus watched them die from where he lay, and looked down at himself. The spikes protruding from his chest were still hot, their ends burning. Faintly, his Astartes mind tallied the hits: 230. Overkill.

An armored man marched up to him, taller than his killers and adorned by a black cloak around his shoulders.

"I am Inquisitor Tripe of the Ordo Secretes," he said, leveling one of the spike rifles with Tersus's head, "May your soul burn in the grasp of daemons, fool."

Tersus died howling his rage into the muzzle of Tripe's Impaler, right up until his brain cavity was evacuated across the decking behind him.

(' ')

"Fall back," Tripe ordered. "More are coming."

"Gak that shite!" Menshaw spat. The ratling looked up at Tripe and scowled. "Let's take them here and now, while we got the upper hand!"

Tripe gave a dry laugh. "We have no such thing. The creature coming for us is much too powerful for your kin to take alone. We must reinforce the bridge and mount a defense. Only there do we stand a chance of survival."

"How the hell do you know what's coming?" Menshaw asked. "What aren't you telling me?"

"A lot of things. That's my job. Now _pull back_."

(' ')

The Chapter Master didn't pause as he walked through the bloodied corridor. Squad Tersus's death did not affect his plans, and after all, he had wanted them out of the way. Tersus himself was... tiresome, to say the least. Without pause, he led the way forward, feeling for the bridge with the extrasensory perception gifted to him by the foul powers he worshiped.

As his roving mind found their location, the Chapter Master's lips peeled back to reveal rows of blackened fangs. _This_, he mused, _was going to be fun_.

_Gallows Superior_, Underbridge

Gort laid into the Executioners left and right, chopping them, shooting them, and just generally being as straight killy as he could be. He even bit out one of their throats, but he didn't eat it on account of it tasted like infected ass.

Next to him was the Manker humie, fighting with his cutty blade and spikey shooter. The Manker humie was a good fighter. Gort would admit that. But he was a little bad on his right side, and kept letting things get close to him, so Gort had to keep reaching over and saving him from things that tried to tear his head off.

Though it went beyond the comprehension of Gort's simple mind, and, indeed, beyond the comprehension of most everyone involved in the fight, this slight leftward leaning by Gort was the final deciding factor in the Dogs' victory. Thanks to Gort's preoccupation with saving Manker, the Dog next to him, a man named Private Vor Saican, had to lean left to save Gort from unexpected attacks, and so on down the line until Manker was himself leaning over to save the man to his left.

Momentum built up and very quickly, the vast wheel formation of the Dogs was rotating, failing to recognize any one point as necessary to defend over another, and forcing the Executioners to divide their attentions equally, lest the newly team-oriented Dogs all lean into a concentrated attack and envelop them.

To Jax, this just gave him the opening he and Castarius had been waiting for. When the time came and every factor was aligned, he and the Techmarine broke rank and charged the hulking form of Nothasius.

(' ')

The former First Captain of the Executioners saw the attack coming and readied himself. His storm bolter, such as it was, was completely dry of ammunition, its receiver locked back as it hung from his thigh. In its place, Nothasius would rely on his power fist, the heavy glove weapon a piece of ancient craftsmanship.

The Techmarine, Castarius, had his mechadendrites and a chainsword. The Confederate came on with nothing aside from his fists and a mind full of rage. Neither had their ranged weapons drawn, with both presumably as dry as Nothasius's own.

With the exception of possibly Castarius's mechanical arms, this fight would be pitifully easy. It almost shamed Nothasius to partake in it.

"Well then," he bellowed as they neared, "Let's get on with it."

Jax launched himself into the air, twisting as he descended. "Bring it!"

The Confederate's elbow crashed against Nothasius's helm, denting the adamantium and shattering his visual auger array. For the space of six seconds, between the time of Jax's first blow and the moment Nothasius pulled his helm off, both the Captain's foes laid into him with abandon.

Castarius ground his chainsword into a weak point in the right shoulder of Nothasius's Terminator armor, powering through to the bone and severing hiss arm inside the suit. Were it not for the Captain twisting away instinctively, Castarius would have done so to the limb that held the mighty power fist, but as it stood, such was impossible.

Jax landed behind the massive Marine and jumped on his back, using his weight to pull the behemoth of an Astartes down. Nothasius landed on Jax with a horrific clang of metal on metal. Beneath him, Jax felt his chest piece caving in.

Nothasius pulled off his useless helm and assessed the situation. Seconds later, he threw Castarius from his chest, preventing the Techmarine from dislodging his chainsword, and struggled to his feet, using Jax as a push point. When he was up, he turned around and slammed a foot down on the Confederate's chest, cracking the neo-steel.

"A good try," he growled, hefting his power fist for a kill strike. "But now you die."

Jax frowned. "Did that rhyme on purpose?"

Nothasius dropped his fist like a piston, the downward thrust forceful enough to shatter the hull of a land raider. The fist landed with a thunderclap of force, the shock of its sudden impact reverberating through its wielder with tectonic power as it collided with…

…Jax's gloves.

"Gotcha," Jax grinned.

The crackling flame-lightning dissipated from the surface of the power fist. As its blue glow died, a blindingly white glare increased in intensity, emanating from the Confederate's palms.

Nothasius's Terminator armor shuddered, its machine spirit raging in confusion at this development. Nothasius sympathized: this made no sense.

The energy built up within Jax's palms was released all at once, propelling Nothasius across the chamber. He dented the deck with his impact, the depowered war plate clanging as he landed. Pieces jarred loose in the blast, like his left gauntlet cover and shoulder pauldron, came apart on impact and skittered across the floor.

In the back of his throat, Nothasius tasted blood.

Across the chamber, Jax got to his feet, letting his hands hang at his sides. Smoke curled up from his scorched palm covers, staining his nose with a smell like melted dura-plas. Other than that and a cracked chestpiece, Jax was fine.

"Castarius!" he bellowed. "Status!"

The Techmarine pulled himself upright, letting one of his sagging mechadendrites fall to the flooring. The loss of that arm hurt for a moment, but with less of his brain spent controlling it, his head felt suddenly clearer. He got fully to his feet and gave Jax a nod.

"I am operational," he said at last.

Jax led the way over to Nothasius and stood on the downed Captain's chest. His visor scanned the man with a beep and ticked off his vitals in curt green script.

Irregular heart fluctuations, severe burns beneath armor, brainwaves erratic: dying.

"Looks like you're done for," Jax muttered.

"Maybe," Nothasius said through a grunt as Castarius dislodged his chainsword from the fallen hero's shoulder. "But at least I can die knowing you will soon follow me."

"Uh-huh," Jax said, looking around at the chamber. The Executioners were dead, and the remaining Dogs—few though they were—were loading their dead onto transport piles. Spare ammunition was being collected, and those in need of medical treatment were seen to. "Looks to me like you done got your ass kicked. How exactly will we be following you?"

Nothasius grinned, his teeth stained with blood. "Even now, your ship is being torn apart from the inside out. My Chapter Master has led the rest of the Executioners into the heart of your vessel, and with no warning, the defense your comrades can hope to mount will in the end be futile. The gambit has paid off, and nothing you can do will stop us."

Castarius drew his bolter and inserted the last of his shells. Cycling the receiver, he leveled it with the First Captain's forehead. "Maybe so," he conceded. "But we shall try."

The bolter boomed in the dark.

**Author's Note: Next time we end this little story arc. It's been a long time coming, I know, but this coming chapter's going to count big time. Huge changes are in store for Jax and his Dogs of War, and someone will die!**

**So, while you're all gasping in shock or whatever, I'm gonna take the time to remind you again of my review craving: I crave reviews, please give them. Done!**

**Hope you liked the duh obvious twist of the Executioners being tainted the whole time. Everything will be resolved next week **

**See you then.  
**


	31. Chapter 31: ExGambit: The Last Execution

Brigham crouched behind his throne, latching his flak armor on with trembling fingers. He was a shipmaster, damnit, not some grunt! Boarding operations had been staged against him in the past, but never like this. Never had one of the invaders had the gall to breach the command decks and get all the way up here, to the very door of his bridge.

They were there now, outside, hammering and cutting their way through the meter thick adamantium partition. Brigham could hear them shouting in their barbaric tongues, offering supplications to whatever foul powers they worshiped. The sound made him grimace.

His armor tied, Brigham hefted the unfamiliar form of the lasgun given to him by the Inquisitor, Tripe.

Tripe was there now, directing the last minute set up of defenses around the bridge, ordering Higgins like his own adjutant. Though he knew it was crazy, Brigham still felt a little angry at the inquisitor for assuming complete control at this time. Higgins was his officer, damnit, and if anyone was going to tell him what to do it was—

"Sir!" shouted the helmsman, one of the few officers still at his console. "Contact from the Battle Saint! The Dogs are moving back now, ETA five minutes."

The bridge erupted in cheers. Apparently, the very fact that Jax was on his way meant salvation. Brigham knew this to be ridiculous. In five minutes, those chaos bastards would be through the door and they would be dead.

"Tell him to hurry his miracle-working ass up, then," Brigham shouted. "We're going to need one."

"Sir, I cannot tell the Battle Saint—"

"You'll tell him," Brigham said, "Tell him word for bloody word, son."

A second later, the door exploded inward and a bolt took off the helmsman's head at the neck. In the ensuing exchange of fire, the Chaos Marines pushed into the bridge, crimson lances of gunflame erupting from their skulled muzzles. Brigham added his lasgun to the fray, peppering the oncoming soldiers of the warp with annoying red stings.

Then he saw the big one, and he stopped.

It towered above its kin, to an Astartes what an Astartes was to a man, bedecked in corrupted, tortured armor from which hung the skulls of those it had slain. Its face was sickly pale, with blackened veins running just beneath its flesh, the thick fluids within pulsing with each beat of his dark hearts.

It smiled and roared a challenge, the words reverberating within the soul of every man aboard.

"I am Chapter Master Grothalamus Thex, and all servants of the False God within this room are going to die!"

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 31: Executioner's Gambit: Part 5: The Last Executioner_

The Valkyries screamed into the hanger, their engines vomiting washes of promethium fire across the decking as they finished their landing runs. Skids touched steel and the hanger doors sealed with a thud. Ramps dropped and the Dogs disembarked, boots pounding new dents in the weathered decking, the able men helping the wounded. The dead were left in place; there would be time to get them later.

Jax was belting orders before he hit the deck, gesturing with jabs of his finger. "Pool ammo and form up in squads! Wounded stay here, one clip each! Rest goes to the combat-capable! Target is a big fucker and more regulars, maybe fifty tops! Head for the bridge and be ready for a fight!"

Acknowledgement runes flashed across the Confederate's visor from every conscious Dog. A minute later and they were moving through the corridors of the _Hammer's Fall_, running along the thruway, their steps quickened by the belt moving beneath their tread.

Aside from Castarius, Dimitri was the closest to Jax at the head of the line, clopping along in his war plate at top speed. His Impaler was fully loaded for the first time since the fight on the flotilla, and as he ran, he felt the overall situation wash to the back of his mind, replaced by a bloody-minded determination to see this battle through to the end.

The Dogs had suffered obscene casualties—over 150 lost on the battle barge alone—and judging by what he saw here, the crew of the frigate had faired little better. Blood splashed bulkheads met him at every turn, and deckhands were strewn across the thruway, their limp bodies cycling down the vacant corridors. The air filtered through his helm smelled of dried blood and decay, mixed with the tang of spent bolter powder.

Someone was uttering a prayer of hate for the Chaos Marines. Only when it was half done did Dimitri realize he was speaking it.

The Dogs would take months to recover from this battle. For that, he would see these monsters rent to pieces.

(' ')

Inquisitor Tripe held his ground against the boarders, putting out as much fire as any of the bridge's other defenders. His spikes mixed with the lasblasts and autogun shot that lanced across the area, and in several places, Executioners fell to the deck, their bodies leaking putrid fluids of unspeakable origin, and for a moment, it looked like the Imperials might stand a chance.

Tripe quashed that thought before it could give him hope, before he could be let down by the cold facts of reality. Even if the meager defense was able to scythe down the forty-some Traitor Marines, the fallen Chapter Master was still more than enough to finish them off.

Spikes bounced from the monster's armor as it advanced, a deep rumbling gurgle emanating from its throat as it crushed menials under its daemonic thunder hammer. Tripe realized with a shudder that the noise was a chuckle and renewed his fire.

The spikes barely stuck to the Chapter Master's heavy war plate, doing little more than drag its attentions around to Tripe's location. With a grin, the monster heaved its way forward.

Throne, but this was futile.

(' ')

Chapter Master Thex could care less for the servitors that scurried beneath him, for the bridge hands that died firing their peashooters, or for the diminutive armored abhumans that put up a fight against his subordinates. All these were inferior targets, not worthy of more than a sweeping glance of his attention.

The tall one in black, however, seemed different. The black coat, the stylized 'I'; Thex knew these customary indicators. An Inquisitor… Now this could prove interesting.

"You!" Thex bellowed, pointing with a clawed forefinger as long as a child's arm, "Inquisitor! Fight me!"

The spikes came again, hammering against his chest and neckpiece. Thex shielded his bare face with his free hand, barreling forward blindly, his thunder hammer quaking in his grasp, wanting blood. Bones crunched beneath his titanic tread—unfortunate injured crewmen caught in the way—and the room shook with his charge.

He swung the hammer and hit something solid. Sparks blasted out of the crushed auger console, the steel having been pancaked to the decking. The Inquisitor had leapt aside! Dodged his attack!

With a howl of rage, Thex rounded fully, searching for his prey. All he saw was a middle-aged mortal hefting a lasgun. The man was in a navy uniform, but Thex paid this no mind as he quite literally swatted the man aside with a backward flick of his wrist.

The impact broke Brigham's jaw and sent him tumbling across the bridge. He slammed into the hololith table, his body crumpling like a stringless puppet. He died moments later, his heart having been impaled by his shattered ribcage.

Thex moved on, swinging his hammer into the dead captain's throne, shattering the seat and atomizing the store of vintage liquor.

Tripe leapt from behind the destroyed throne, his weapon reloaded, and opened fire again as he strafed across the deck, his firing line passing just over the heads of the embattled crewmen and Traitors, intentionally putting them in a position to be speed bumps against the Chapter Master's inevitable second rush.

Spikes clattered on Thex's torso again, but unlike before, this time one landed on the mark, burying itself in the barely exposed flesh above his neckring. Blood trickled out from around the heated steel, and though the pain had barely registered, the very fact that he had been wounded galled Thex to his core. His next charge leveled six more crewmen as he scrambled to get at the Inquisitor.

(' ')

Jax was the first of the relief force to make it onto the bridge, and he did so in grandiose style, hitting the nearest Executioner with a full force left hook. The impact spun the Traitor, dazing him as Jax hosed him with spike fire and kicked him into the mapping pit. The Confederate let out a rebel yell and pushed further in, punching, shooting and kicking his way to the front in a fit of rage.

Behind him, the rest of the Dogs followed suit, spreading out and firing from the hip as they took up cover behind consoles riddled with bolter damage. Dimitri ended up alongside Manker, helping the Kriegan lieutenant dispatch Traitors at range with select bursts. With the elements of surprise and numerical advantage both in the Dogs' favor, the Executioners began dropping with ease.

Jax didn't stop. His charge was reckless and relentless, the sheer momentum pushing him to the fore of the bridge where he jumped a line of armsmen to get at the Chapter Master. Dimitri watched him go. What happened in the next minute would be something he remembered for the rest of his life.

(' ')

Tripe fired at Thex, the Chapter Master barreling through banks of cogitators to get at him. Sparks burst from the exploding machines, filling the air between the two with a maelstrom of electrical fire. At Tripe's back was the forward window, its stained glass reflecting each muzzle flash of his Impaler in a brilliant array of colors. In a moment, Tripe knew, it would also reflect his death, for there was no escaping the fate that lay before him.

Thex knew it, too; his smile said so. For all the Inquisitor's maneuverings, he would crush Tripe like a bug under the head of his great hammer.

Jax had other ideas.

The Confederate launched himself off a shattered marble pillar and hit Thex in the back with all his weight. This, combined with the Chapter Master's already considerable forward momentum, sent the two into an uncontrollable forward stumble. The thunder hammer came down, its trajectory altered so to see it miss Tripe by scant inches, and crash against the window beyond.

The initial wallop of the hammer's head discharging was heard for a total of a second before it was overcome by the far greater explosion of the window shattering under the stress of the sucking void beyond.

Tripe saw it happen in slow motion: the atmosphere inside the bridge rippling as the air was suddenly pulled one way, the gentle flow of the stained glass panels sucked away into the nothingness beyond the hull, and Jax being spaced, his body entangled with the much larger Grothalamus Thex.

(' ')

Dimitri gripped the console in front of him as the bridge was filled with a banshee wail. Servitors and crewmen were ripped out first, the latter screaming in terror, the former in eerie compliance. Those of the Dogs who couldn't hang on were pulled out too, mostly the Ratdogs who had been embattled on the bridge before the arrival of Jax's forces. Corpses were sucked away, Imperial and Chaotic alike, their lifeless forms bouncing against equipment and each other as they were ripped free.

Dimitri made a handhold in the decking, his powered neo-steel-shod hands digging into the ceramite with ease. Next to him, Manker did the same with one arm, his other holding a Dog as the man flailed in sucking vacuum.

Stuck like this, Dimitri rode out the voiding, waiting for the air to be finally gone so that he could move again. Closing his eyes, he prayed.

(' ')

Outside the frigate's hull, Jax and Thex were locked in a fight for survival. Weapons forgotten in the sudden voiding, the two warriors exchanged blows fist-to-fist, at once punching and grappling one another to stay together in the zero-gee.

Thex held his breath, his Astartes physiology giving him ninety minutes of lung-life to live off of, while Jax kept his visor mag-locked. Both men worked for those weaknesses, Thex making to break that glass dome, Jax to open his opponent's throat with his gloved fingers.

Blows delivered in silence dented armor as they tumbled, the warp surrounding them in the distance a living background of ululating reddened slashes that seemed to score their struggle with a visual symphony.

Jax moved above Thex and flipped behind him, his hands working his way around the man's body, dodging upward punches with inches to spare. At the apex of his maneuver, he pulled his flak pistol, hoping to end the brawl with a shot down into the bastard's skull, but that, too, was short-lived, as Thex caught the barrel and broke it with his iron-grasp.

The Chapter Master's hands grabbed Jax around the shoulders and pulled him down, past Thex's front, and headfirst into an adamantium knee guard. The hit cracked Jax's visor in a spiderweb pattern, but the glass held, miraculously.

Swearing a made-up curse, Jax swung his feet up and locked his ankles around Thex's temples. He squeezed, the pneumatic muscles of his armor groaning under the maximum strain as he tried to crack the thickened skull of the Astartes warrior, holding the man's knees at bay with both hands.

Stars bursting across his vision, Thex realized how close he was to death. With no other options open to him, he kicked Jax away, letting the Confederate spin into the void.

Jax tumbled in the slack gravity, unable to right himself and only able to see Thex once every turn. On the first turn, the Chapter Master was pulling a storm bolter from his thigh. On the second, he was taking careful aim, ready to riddle Jax.

Bolts snaked through the vacuum past Jax's head a moment later, off by scant inches. The Confederate twisted, evading another volley of shots, and reached for the combat knife on his boot. Pulling it, he waited for the next roll, and hurled it like a javelin.

The blade soared through space like a bullet and cut past Thex, opening his temple with a grazing impact. Blood trailed into space. In response, a trio of bolts smacked into Jax's shoulder guard, breaking the neo-steel in shards and spinning him further off course. The distance between the two warriors grew larger.

Jax twisted and looked back to see the warp wall closing in on him, its burbling surface no more than half a kilometer away. Swallowing, he turned back to Thex.

The Chapter Master fired his storm bolter in the opposite direction, the recoil propelling him straight for Jax. He came on strong, ready to finish this fight at close quarters. As he drew near, Jax could see the hatred in his eyes, the hatred only a one-track mind could produce.

And suddenly, Jax had a brilliant idea.

Thex was inches away, close enough to touch, so Jax did. With a deftness coming from years of stacking poker decks and a childhood of stealing chew from grocery store counters, Jax grabbed the arm that Thex held his storm bolter in and pulled the Chapter Master in closer, disarming him with a forceful snap of the Astartes's wrist.

Tossing the weapon to the abyss, Jax dodged a one-armed grab and pushed off of Thex's chest with both feet, propelling each of them in opposite directions: Jax back toward the _Hammer's Fall_, and Thex directly into the warp cloud.

As Thex soared away in an uncontrollable descent into hell, his mouth opened in a silent roar of hatred. Veins in his superhuman neck burst, and a blood vessel in his brain exploded, but no cry was heard. With a splash like a pebble breaching the ocean's surface, the empyrean swallowed him.

Drifting away in the void, Jax smiled and muttered, "See you, Space Marine."

(' ')

With the atmosphere inside the bridge finally vented fully, Dimitri had been able to watch the end of Jax's duel from the shattered window. When it was done, he voxed live on the all-channel the results.

"Jax won. The Chapter Master is dead."

No one cheered. Behind him, with what was left of the bridge crew bloated in the vacuum, unable to stand against the sudden airlessness.

He sighed. With so many dead, rebuilding this unit would be a chore. That said, getting back into realspace was a whole task in and of itself.

"Castarius," he voxed. "We need you to do a few things."

(' ')

Castarius watched Jax's approach vector as he stood on the outer hull of the _Hammer's Fall_, his boots magnetically sealed to the steel. Judging the angle of descent to within one-thousandth of an inch with his helm's auspex, the Techmarine reached out with a mechadendrite and caught the Confederate's hand, hauling him to the deck.

"Thanks." Jax's own boots thunked onto the steel and he looked up at Castarius, his visor's polarization fading to reveal his face. "What's up?"

"Vlasna has begun work with servitor teams in sealing the bridge from the void, and we have begun the repairs needed to translate back into true realspace. ETA to completion is six hours."

Suddenly, the warp wall around them vibrated, ululating in the stillness. Both men looked at their surroundings; the warp was constricting.

"The hell?" Jax wondered aloud.

Castarius frowned. "Evidently, the Chapter Master was all that was holding this pocket of realspace stable. With him gone, the warp is closing in to reclaim the area."

"Then we ain't gonna have six hours." Jax pushed past him, moving for an entry hatch.

"What will you do?" Castarius asked.

Jax looked back at him for a second. "I dunno. I was thinking something saintly."

Castarius checked on the encroaching warp. "You have five minutes at best."

"Then I'm gonna have to hurry, huh? Lead me to the Navigators."

Four Minutes and Thirty-Five Seconds Later

One moment, Dimitri was on the bridge, watching the warp close to within seven meters of the shattered view port. From that range, he could see the thirsting daemons moving within its reddened haze. He knew this was it, and checked his rifle, ready to die fighting.

Then there was a flash of light. Dimitri heard singing, like a choir of angels, and for a minute, he was on fire.

And the next moment he was cold, in a darkened chamber, sprawled on the floor. The choir was still there, louder now. He could scarcely think with its volume, and he doubled up in pain, clutching at the audio pickups on his helmet.

Tripe was shouting. "How did we get here! Confederate! Answer me!"

Suddenly, the choir toned down, and Dimitri could hear Jax speak. "I, uh, brought us here?"

Lights grew from the vaulted ceiling, and Dimitri looked around. The chamber was a dome, expanding out far above him to the point where it surpassed his depth perception, appearing flat at such an extreme range. Rivulets carved into the dome's sides were filled with people, each one robed in sheets of white.

The Dogs were there around him, spread across a dark stone floor older than the Imperium itself. They were automatically taking up defensive positions, despite the clear daze they all shared.

Jax was near him, standing above the crouching form of the Navigator girl, Cardigan. The woman was shaking, her hands clutching her closed third eye. Averting his eyes to Jax, Dimitri watched the slow grin spread across the Confederate's face.

"I did it!" he shouted. "I teleported us! Yeah!"

Dimitri found his voice. "But where are we?"

"Where?" Tripe smirked. "My dear Equerry Vlasna, this is the Astronomican."

**Author's Note: So, short chapter, but whatever. I got it out. That's the end of this story arc, and next time we're moving on to the beginning of a newer, more mobile Dogs of War.**

**Uh, and if you were looking for another Iron Knight chapter, it won't be up until tomorrow.**

**As always, gimme thoughts, and I'll see you later.  
**


	32. Chapter 32: R&R: Bamf!

Dimitri pushed off of the stone floor and wobbled on his feet, still dizzied by the translocation. "Okay, so, let's start with how in the hell you teleported us all the way back to Terra."

"Oh, um," Jax started, "Well, we had to get out of there, and so I found the Navigators and all and then had them locate this place and then I touched them and teleported us all here."

"Since when can you do that?"

"Uh, just now?"

Dimitri couldn't help shouting. "Stop developing powers out of nowhere! Why the hell can you do things like that!"

"Because he is a saint," Tripe replied. "Now, if you'll all calm down for a minute, I do believe we're about to be taken by the security legionnaires stationed outside."

Circular panels in the floor irised open and whole squads of Adeptus Custodes marched into the Astronomican, spears up and panning for targets. The Dogs aimed back in confusion, and each side was suddenly poised to obliterate the other.

"Calm down!" Jax shouted. "Everybody just stand down! We don't want to fight!"

Voices rose in protest from the Dogs, and Dimitri thought he heard Manker shout 'ready!' in prelude to a firing order. Shouts of willingness to die and threats of burning in the warp issued from the Custodes.

Dimitri reluctantly raised his rifle. Of all the places to fight his way out of…

"Brothers!" boomed a voice, "Stand down! These are allies!"

Captain General Valdon pushed his way out of the Custodes line, his black-feathered helm and barrel chest even more distinctive than those of his brothers. He stepped up to the Dogs, his very presence forcing barrels aside, and greeted Jax personally.

"Battle Saint," he grunted. "I trust there is a reason you are here so suddenly."

Jax shook hands with the head of the Custodes. "Oh, y'know, got done killing some Chaos guys. Just figured we'd drop in and say hey."

"Well, be thankful I was on an inspection tour," Valdon replied. "Otherwise, I fear this encounter may have played out differently."

"Yeah, we'd of kicked yer ass."

Valdon smiled. "Confederate, there are two hundred more of my men waiting outside."

"Maybe so." Jax gestured around at the psykers slaved to consoles around the room, each one a precious find and trained for the job at hand. "But I've got hostages."

"A dirty trick, some would say."

"War's a dirty business, Valdon," Jax replied.

That got a grin out of the Captain General. "I'm in agreement. Now then, assemble your men. I'll get us transport back to the Imperial Palace."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 32: Rest and Relaxation: Part 1: BAMF!_

Dimitri watched the Astronomican recede in the shuttle's rear. These mountains were one of the few patches of Terra untainted by the smog that encircled the world, but nonetheless the giant white orb perched atop Everest soon disappeared in the Himalayan mists.

Dimitri remained standing, staring at the place it had occupied. "How do we do this?" he muttered to himself. "How do we avoid the death that would come to anyone else who does what we do? It doesn't make sense."

The answer came from Tripe, who despite Dimitri's armor scanners was able to approach him undetected and overhear his mumblings.

"Equerry, some men are just made to be accepted, to be brought in with open arms into any part of society, despite their obvious problems. These men possess charm, a quality that most men do not have." He paused. "Men like you and I are the opposite."

Dimitri snapped in reply. "I am nothing like you."

"No? You're intelligent, astute, inquisitive, and unbiased. You see deeper into matters that the Imperium at large would view as shallow. You understand the complexities of what others see as simple. And you don't believe that Jax is truly touched by the Emperor."

Dimitri stared at the retreating mountains. By this point, the smog was flowing behind them, and they were beginning to be swallowed by the pollution.

"No, I don't," he said at last.

Tripe smiled. "But you believe he is necessary."

"Yes."

"Hm." Tripe crossed his arms, a motion made of grinding servos and hissing pistons. "Look at me. What am I wearing?"

"CMC 300 power armor."

"And how did I get it?"

"You took it."

Tripe nodded. "And did anyone mention it? No. Because I keep low and don't make a fuss. That said, I get more accomplished than anyone outside the Inquisition, because I know how the galaxy works. And I think you do, too."

"What do I know about the galaxy?"

"You know that everyone is a tool, from the highest lord to the lowest slave. You understand that with the right words in the right places, people will do anything you want them to, and you know how to use that knowledge for good." Tripe looked directly into Dimitri's eyes. "And right now, you are in the best position to change the face of the future. You are the trusted friend of one of the most powerful men to ever walk the galactic plane. He trusts you implicitly."

Dimitri turned his body flush with Tripe. "You would have me use Jax?"

"Only so much as the High Lords already use him," Tripe replied. "The difference, I believe, is that you understand just how he can be used to change the world. He is powerful, yes, but he can only kill so many enemies in a lifetime. You understand his greater effect on the public, and I believe that you can utilize it by being his manager."

Dimitri didn't give a positive or a negative response. He already knew that he was going to do it, just as he knew that Tripe knew it.

"So what now?" he asked simply.

Tripe smiled again. "Now, this shuttle is going to set down in the Imperial Palace. A woman is going to meet us there, and with her at my side, I am going to leave along with Gort. You are going to take over from here, starting with the evaluation of Jax's newest... acquisitions. Then move forward from there."

"Fine. Why are you taking Gort?"

"That's confidential."

Dimitri smirked. "And here I was thinking we were becoming all chummy…"

Tripe shrugged. "He's a very special lab-grown Ork. Let's just leave it at that."

"Fair enough, Inquisitor."

(' ')

The landing went exactly as Tripe had described. The Dogs filed out, and were met on the landing pad by a fleet of servitors sent from the Mechanicus of Mars, led by a techpriest tasked by the Fabricator General himself to assist Castarius in the clean-up and refitting of the unit. Squads formed into inspection lines and were led to barracks within a cleared adept spire.

Tripe moved away without a word, joining a red haired woman in Inquisitional robes. She whistled a three-note tune and Gort came running, crouching by her side and giving her a long hug.

"The hell's up with that?" Jax asked.

Dimitri shrugged. "Guess his time with us is up. The people that made him are taking him back."

"Really? What for?"

"Tripe wasn't really clear," Dimitri replied. "Just said they were taking him because he was special."

"Damn. I hope we get to… wait a minute." Jax stood on his tip-toes and squinted at the trio. "That's funny."

"Huh?" Dimitri followed his gaze. They were already moving away toward another shuttle, this one a big black vessel from the Inquisition.

"Nothin'." Jax relaxed. "Just thought I recognized her is all."

(' ')

For Dimitri, the next few days went by in a blur of papers, adepts, questions, answers and politics. He filled out reports for each of the High Lords, not one shorter than fifty pages and each detailing Jax and the Dogs of War's accomplishments. He then wrote a pan-galactic announcement for the Grand Choir to broadcast during the end of the month propaganda bundle, followed by a tour of the Dogs' housing accommodations.

Each Dog had his own quarters, complete with a full staff of maids and cooks. This lasted ten minutes before Jax declared SOP and started breaking down walls with his rifle. Now the housing was composed into bunk rooms arranged by platoons, with all non-essential spire personnel save cooks and cleaners sent on permanent leave.

He booked an appearance for Jax at the Cathedral Imperialis, and experienced both the pain of watching him deliver the Emperor's Daily Prayer in front of a crowd of 200,000 priests and the confusion when it was received with deafening applause.

Next was an ammo and equipment tally from Castarius, an hour long conversation that amounted to 'we're low but are getting more from Mars, thanks for asking.' Despite the events of the past days, the Techmarine had yet to lose his penchant for inflated language.

Manker was the next to meet, with his assessment of their combat strength being 'need more now'. For Dimitri, the simple answer was his best news all day. He then spent another six hours pouring over candidates from Imperial records at the Librarium of Terra, a country-sized building with chambers as high as church spires.

He kept Jax busy shaking hands and making friends. The Confederate met with dignitaries and High Lords throughout each day, some coming to the Dogs' spire, others in the privacy of their own homes or offices. In each case, the Battle Saint's own charisma and charm did their trick, and he kept himself in check to the point that Dimitri almost considered letting him attend on his own. Almost.

Dimitri also spent time overhauling the unit's SOPs with Jax, rewriting whole swathes of their conduct and objectives sections to solidify the unit's purpose as a rapid-response strike team.

Before that would work, however, some things had to be tested…

The Dogs' Spire, One Week after the Executioners Incident

It was night out on this part of Terra, but even now the Imperial Palace shone blue. Vast avenues of candle-totting adepts stretched out below the spire for countless kilometers, all trips leading to the pyramid structure that dominated the entire continent: the Inner Palace, and within, the Golden Throne.

Dimitri had to force himself not to just stare at it. That feat in and of itself was incredible. Being that close to the entombed Emperor himself… Dimitri was amazed that he could make it his second priority at all.

"Jax," he started. "We need to talk."

The Confederate yawned and stretched, his shoulders popping with the sound of an electrical pop. "Kinda figured that, beings you called me up here and all. You know I was sleeping, right?"

"I haven't slept in days," Dimitri countered. "Don't be an ass."

"So what's up?"

Dimitri leaned on the wrought iron railing that ringed the balcony. "You're up, Jax. We need to map out this new teleporting ability, figure out its limits and benefits."

"Oh, well why didn't you just say that?" Jax moved forward. "Here, give me your hand."

"What? Why—"

_Fshwambamf!_

Dimitri blinked his eyes to clear the sunspots left by Jax's teleportation flash and looked around. The night was gone, replaced by a calm dusk. The fading light of twin suns seeped through a destroyed cityscape and pooled across the broken cobblestone of a worn courtyard, reflecting from shards of scattered glass.

Jax let go of Dimitri and hopped up on a marble pedestal, Impaler in hand.

"Know where we are?" he asked.

Dimitri nodded. "Dancer IV, Thantos Hive, the courtyard where we met."

"Yup." Jax looked around and clamped his Impaler to his back. "Doesn't look like they done much cleaning, though. Kinda worse'n we left it, honestly."

"How did you do this? I thought you needed a Navigator to guide you."

"Just to places I haven't been to before," Jax said. "I can feel this place, though. Same as the other places we've been. I can't see them or nothing; just feel 'em."

"So you can teleport anywhere that you've already been to, at any time, and take people with you by touching them."

"Nah, don't need to touch ya. I don't think so, leastways." Jax frowned. "Here, let's find out for sure."

"Hang on a sec—"

_Fshwambamfshsham! _

"—ond! Damnit, Jax!"

"Oh look, it did work."

The jungle crowded around them. Humidity clung to Dimitri's face, already dampening his neckline. The air was thick with the smell of infected swamp, and his legs were submerged up to his knees in groundwater. Daylight strained through an oppressive canopy dotted both their armored bodies in sticks of shadow and dots of illumination.

"Swamprot, the planet where we met Animal Mother." Dimitri slammed his visor down and let the air filtration kick in. "Do you have to absorb energy to do this?"

Jax nodded. "Yeah, but I had a fusion coil for breakfast, so we can do this for a while. Wanna go again?"

_Fshwamslambamf!_

The world was dark and filled with smokestacks, groaning manufactory machines the size of mountains, and an overcast smog sky. The constant murmur of worker chatter overlaid everything, and in the distance, Dimitri could hear a vox-speaker droning instructions in machine code.

"Mars," he muttered. "Why Mars?"

"Why not Mars?"

"Fair point. What's the limit on how much you can take with you? You took over a hundred Dogs on that first jump."

Jax shrugged. "Probably depends on what I got bouncin' around in me."

"So it's limited by your energy level, then?"

"I guess."

Jax grabbed a passing servitor by the shoulder and introduced himself, shaking its hand with an iron grip. Unable to convert the input words into a command within its parameters, the servitor's brain overloaded. When Jax let go, it toppled to the grating and died with a little spasm.

"Damn," muttered the Confederate. "Poor little robot fella."

Dimitri sighed. "So how does the Navigator thing work?"

"Well, when I touched that Cardigan chick, I got to see whatever she concentrated on. I told her to look for a safe place and to do it quick, and she did, and I jumped us to the Assholebottlecan."

"Astronomican," Dimitri corrected. "How'd you know that would work?"

"Just had a hunch." Jax cocked his head to the side. "Something wrong, Dimitri?"

"No more than usual."

"You get it now?"

"Jax, I don't think I'll ever 'get' anything you do, but I have enough of an understanding to work with."

"Yeah, I think we can use this instead of a ship!"

"Yes, Jax, I think you're right." Dimitri looked around at the manufactory complex. "But I'll have to talk to Miss Cardigan first. We need to find out exactly how your interface with her Navigation powers works."

"Oh, okay. I'll take you there."

_Fshwambamffamf!_

(' ')

Yevina Cardigan hadn't left her quarters since she returned to Terra, hadn't seen any of the planet of her birth, hadn't visited the House Cardigan's spire clutch in North Urk, hadn't looked out the window, and hadn't even left her bed in four days. All she did now was stare at the ceiling and try not to think, because now, every time she had a thought, it was about her brother Ulrich.

He was dead. Yevina knew that. She had been a Navigator for far too long to think foolishly enough to believe that he had survived the warp after she evacuated with the Dogs. He had stayed as long as he could in the faint hope that the genatorium could be repaired enough to make a transition, but that hadn't happened.

He was dead, she told herself. She did this partly to ease her own mind. Engulfed as he had been by the warp, death was the sweetest fate Ulrich could receive.

Now, Yevina closed her eyes and opened her third. Its milky surface felt the cold of the air thrown down from the ceiling fan, and it twitched in its bruised socket. Unlike her normal eyes, it could not cry, and somehow that seemed like a blessing to Yevina.

Looking at the world through this one perspective comforted her. It was a constant, something that came to Yevina rarely in life. No matter what else happened, she would always be accompanied by the gift and curse of her third eye.

There was a knock at the door, followed by a voice. "Miss Cardigan? We're coming in."

As the door opened, Yevina closed her eye and slipped on her headband. She opened her normal eyes and saw two armored figures step through the door, one white and massive, the other shorter and red. She knew them instantly.

"Battle Saint. Equerry Vlasna." She nodded in respect. "What may I do for you?"

"Can," Jax replied.

"Come again, sire?"

"Can," the Confederate repeated. "May's wrong. It ain't goodly grammar."

Yevina felt suddenly confused. What was she supposed to say to that? Correcting a Battle Saint had to be bad form, right?

Thankfully, Dimitri cleared it up by ignoring Jax's words. "I just have a few questions. Are you busy?"

"Not at all," she said, sitting up. "Ask away, Equerry."

Dimitri smiled thinly and scratched his chin, where a shadow of a beard was beginning to grow. Yevina thought it made him seem more masculine. The tonnage of armored bulk encasing him didn't hurt, either.

"Medically, you were unaffected, but I want to know how you felt about the teleportation event." Dimitri looked up at her from his dataslate. "Did you feel uncomfortable?"

Yevina nodded. "Yes, very. But not in a bad way. It was just a new sensation. I was able to find the Astronomican easily enough, though, so there was little to worry about."

"What about other locations?" Dimitri asked. "Would you be able to pinpoint other planets using the Astronomican's light to direct further teleportations?"

"Yes."

"Would you like to?"

"Absolutely," Yevina lied. Did she want to try more unproven, cutting edge maneuvers in Navigating that had a high probability of getting her killed? Most certainly not. She wasn't insane.

That said, she did suddenly feel the need to stay close to the Dogs. After all, without Ulrich, there was no constant person in her life. Maybe these soldiers could provide that. Maybe even one in particular could do so…

"You name the location, Equerry, and I will do my best. I can't be more specific than planets, though. Fair warning."

"That's all we need, Miss Cardigan." Dimitri smiled at her. "We appreciate your participation. Please report to the spire gardens for armor orientation tomorrow morning."

Yevina's face fell. "Armor orientation? What for?"

Jax spoke up. "For keeping you safe in all the combat zones we're gonna drag you into. Can't very well have our Navigator gettin' all holy on us."

"Holy?"

"Full of holes," Dimitri reiterated. "Don't worry, Miss. You won't be killing anything any time soon."

Dimitri turned to leave. Before following, Jax refuted his declaration with a mouthing of the words 'yes you will!' along with a pantomime of firing a preposterously large gun. When they were gone, Yevina collapsed back on her bed and stared at the ceiling again.

What was she thinking?

**Author's Note: Don't crucify me for making Gort leave the series. It's okay, I assure you. You'll get more Gort than ever in the coming weeks, just not in the Confederate. Yes, I'm finally writing that spin-off that I've hinted at. So, keep your eyes peeled for the new story. Or, you know, subscribe to an author alert. Your call.**

**Finally, I hope this chapter cleared up the parameters of Jax's new abilities. That was the primary goal of this kick-off to the new arc-an arc that will consist of two chapters at most before we move on to bigger and better things. Hope you enjoyed it. **

**Drop a review if you don't mind, and I'll see you next week.**


	33. Chapter 33: R&R: A Day in the Life

_**Note: This picks up a week after the Chapter 32. The Dogs have been on Terra for two weeks at this point.**_

Dimitri woke up at 0600 and rolled out of his cot before his eyes were open, a reflex honed from years in the Guard. He told the servitor that had given him his wake up call to shut up and padded into the shower, wiping sleep from his eyes. He was still wiping them when he finished breakfast, and only managed to chase off the trace remnants of it when he climbed into his suit and started work on Jax's daily schedule.

The bullet points flashed past him as fast as he could blink them away. Leading live fire combat exercises at 0630, meeting with dignitaries from the Mechanicus on Mars at 0730, teleporting back to Terra at 0850, unit-wide daily prayer at 0900, tutoring swordsmanship with Valdon in inner palace from 1000 to noon, then lunch with High Lord Xanthius till 1300.

Then they were to hop off world, starting with a sermon on the hive world Keyido IV at 1400 to put down a possible uprising, followed by a speech to the priesthood of Graymalkyn—the largest shrine world in the Ultima Pacificus—at 1530. Finally, to close out the day, he was booked for a meeting with the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, Marneus Calgar from 1700 standard till whenever.

Calgar's message was brief and nonspecific as to the purpose of the requested visit, and Dimitri had worried about the actions pertaining to Sicarius's Second Company coming back to haunt them. Jax had brushed the worries aside, and soon Dimitri found himself forgetting about them.

After all, there was saint-load of work to be done between now and then, and he had yet to put a dent in it.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 33: Rest and Relaxation: Part 2: A Day in the Life_

It was 0631 and they were already late. Dimitri hammered on the bathroom door, his gauntlet leaving dents the ornately sculpted steel. Why the hell a bathroom door needed a mural of the Emperor engraved in its surface, he had no idea.

"Jax, hurry it up, would you?"

"Gimme a minute!" came the cry from within. "I gotta take care of this!"

"Well get it done!" Dimitri crossed his arms. "Why are you even in there, anyway? Your suit reprocesses all your waste into fuel."

The door slid open. "Exactly!" Jax exclaimed. He held up a grey tube attached to his fusion pack. It smelled like poo.

"That smells like poo," Dimitri said.

"That's because it eats poo; sucks it right up into the tank for processing. I was running a little low this morning, so I had to improvise."

Dimitri shook his head. "I feel as though we've had this conversation before. Why did I even ask?"

"Not a clue. Ready?"

0635, Dog Spire Courtyard, Terra

Eight square kilometers of manicured gardens and fountains sat suspended between the upper and mid spire levels, kept contained and maintained by a mist layer descending from above and an army of serfs from below. At this time in the morning, the weather control system painted the grass with dew, dew that rose from the earth with each of Dimitri's steps, dotting his greaves as he walked.

Jax left him to join the troops in the lower gardens, leaving Dimitri to meet with the men standing above the skirmish zone.

These morning exercises were never private; members of Imperial councils and high-ranking dignitaries from the Guard were always present, and rarely the same attendants twice. They were invited here by Xanthius, part of what Dimitri was recognizing as a newfound faith in the Dogs initiative by the High Lord.

All of their funding now came from Xanthius's own pocket as opposed to the Imperial treasury, a side-effect of a live demonstration of Jax's new abilities. The incident was still clear in Dimitri's mind, as was the piece of the council room that Jax had glassed with a blast from his palms.

Dimitri greeted the delegates one at a time, shaking each man's hand. It was a powerful gesture; pressing the flesh of one's palm to the unyielding Neo-steel of his gauntlet was sure to leave an impression. The fact that he dwarfed them helped, too.

When that was done, he left them to stand with Castarius as Jax ran through the exercises below.

"Good to see you're back from Mars," he told the Techmarine, stifling a yawn.

"Indeed," Castarius replied. His servo arm whirred as it brought a dataslate down in front of him. Castarius plucked the slate and handed it to Dimitri. "The projections you required."

Dimitri thumbed through the figures. "Does this mean what I think it means?"

Castarius nodded. "Yes. Given the resources of High Lord Xanthius, I can now replicate Neo-steel."

"How cost-effective is it?" Dimitri asked.

"It isn't." Castarius looked at him. "The cost of each suit is equivalent to a fully armed frigate."

"Small price compared to the effect it will have on the public."

"Irrelevant," Castarius said. "The impact on morale cannot be factored into the effectiveness of a weapon."

"Never underestimate emotion, Castarius."

"Emotion is a hindrance," the Techmarine replied. He took the dataslate back. "I will have production projections by the end of the day. Goodbye, Equerry Vlasna."

'Emotion is a hindrance?' Dimitri didn't agree, but he understood the viewpoint. Castarius was retreating back into himself again, back to being more Mechanicus than Marine, and Dimitri couldn't blame him. After killing the rest of his chapter, could the Techmarine really be expected to be warm and fuzzy?

Servitors were being deployed on the lawns below, outnumbering the Dogs seven-to-one. Weapons were drawn, bolts racked, and aim taken. Jax belted an order and the 'exercise' went live with the rip of Impaler fire.

0700

_Fshwamfambamf!_

Dimitri blinked away the sunspots and focused his eyes on their surroundings. Jax had put the both of them perfectly on the mark: right outside the Fabricator General's spire hall on a landing pad meant for luxury shuttles. Mars stretched out around them, littered with the manufactory colonies that covered its surface. In the sky above, Dimitri could make out the edges of the orbital factorum rings.

"Good shot," he said.

"Thanks," Jax replied.

A group of adepts greeted them from the spire proper, not one of them composed of more than five percent skin. They were high-ranking servants in the Mechanicus, and as such had replaced most of their bodies with cybernetics, notably mechadendrites and servo clamps, claws, and arms. Their robes were carapaces of rust-red steel, segmented to the point that they flowed like cloth.

"Greetings Battle Saint," spoke the leader, a lanky man with crystalline eyes. "This one is Magos Superior Vivikok. This one will be your guide and translator."

"Thank you, Magos Superior. I am Dimitri Vlasna, Equerry to the Battle Saint."

"And I am the Battle Saint," Jax said, breaking the ritual greeting. "What's yer name again?"

The techpriest stuttered for a second, but replied. "Magos Superior Vivikok."

Jax was trying not to laugh. "Last name one more time?"

"Vivikok."

As Jax descended into chuckles, Dimitri spoke. "Should we see the Fabricator General now?"

"Indeed," Vivikok replied. "This one will lead you. Please follow."

They met the Fabricator General in what Dimitri guessed would be the Mechanicus equivalent of a dining hall. The chamber was sparse and intended for guests—the General himself was augmented to the point where he did not require sustenance.

The Fabricator General was a lithe figure of seven feet and only as bulky as a common Guardsman. Dimitri's visor scanned him and revealed a body made entirely out of adamantium, with no discernable weapons and a power supply so well shielded that only trace amounts of a fusion reaction could be detected.

"Looks a little different don't he?" Jax muttered.

Dimitri agreed; this was a far cry from the bulky cogitator-like creature that had voted for Jax's sainthood in the council chambers almost a year ago.

The General's head was an eyeless dome that turned languidly to favor them as they entered, colored, as was the rest of his body, with an unbroken silver sheen. Dimitri had a suspicion that he had heard Jax.

A burst of machine code sounded from the Fabricator General and was translated by Vivikok. "Battle Saint. It has been exactly 320 days, 1032 minutes since last we saw each other. The form you saw then was the meeting proxy. I now wear the battle proxy."

"What now?" Jax asked.

Another burst. "My consciousness data is not contained within a single form. Consciousness instead resides within a secured Mechanicus location. Consciousness is physically represented by a proxy form. What stands before you is the battle proxy. I understand this is hard for your primitive mind to grasp."

Jax frowned. "You sound like a fart when you talk."

"You sound like a mentally deficient monkey."

"Them sounds like fightin' words, and beings yer already wearin' your fightin' suit…"

Dimitri grabbed him. "Jax, no."

"Dimitri, yes." Jax shoved him aside. "How 'bout it, robo-dick?"

"Very well. Recreational combat subroutines active." Steel shifted and the General's left arm became a plasma cannon, while his right unfolded into a sword of vibrating steel. "Commence when ready."

0845, Terra

"One of these days, you're going to fight someone who doesn't think its fun and you're going to die," Dimitri said. "You know that, right?"

Jax popped his cracked visor and pulled it completely off. He tossed it in the garbage and pulled another one from the rack next to him. Around them, the armory was empty aside from a pair of Dogs swapping stories by the entrance. They had quieted down when Jax entered, and were now watching Jax and Dimitri's conversation with unsubtle glances.

"Probably, but it worked out this time. I got this!" He held up the pure adamantium sword that the Fabricator General had given him. "Sure as hell beats that chainsword y'all had me using."

"Yes." Dimitri rubbed his temples, a motion less comfortable than normal thanks to his armored fingers. "And we were able to establish official relations with the Mechanicus, secure ammunition and armor production rights, mark out guidelines of interaction, gain asylum privileges in case of political fallout with the Imperium, and obtain a written blessing from the Fabricator General himself."

"And I got this sword."

"And all because you had a fistfight with their leader." Dimitri sighed. "You know, that would have turned out differently for most people."

"Yeah, well, most people ain't saints from another timeline."

"Universe," Dimitri corrected.

"Whatever." Jax snapped his new helmet on and started off toward the exit. "I gotta go. Supposed to hang out with Valdon today."

"I know, Jax. I'm looking at your schedule."

"Well what time you want me back?"

Dimitri checked. "Noon. You're meeting Xanthius at noon, so be back then."

"Gotcha. Have fun with Miss Cardigan."

That gave Dimitri pause. "How'd you know about that?"

Jax didn't reply. He just grinned and left the armory.

0915

"There you are." Yevina Cardigan stood from the stone wall, her suit of muted yellow CMC armor whirring with the movement. "I've been waiting here for ten minutes."

Dimitri motioned back over his shoulder. "Had to schedule a shuttle change for the Battle Saint. I hope you weren't attacked by roving bands of aliens while I was gone."

"Only a dozen or so, but I fought them off well enough."

Dimitri smiled. "Is that so?"

"It is indeed," she replied with a serious face. "They were beastly things with tusks and guns. I feared for my life."

"That sounds terrible. How did you survive?"

Yevina held up her Impaler. "This."

"Oh. That does help." Dimitri planted himself next to her. "Well, while you're in the shooting mood, let's take a crack at hitting that fountain across the way."

His HUD placed the fountain in question at a hundred meters out, the sculpted angel atop it the size of an ork nob. Between the Impaler's magazine capacity and the CMC system's targeting software, it was impossible to miss.

But building accuracy wasn't the point of this. The point was to get Yevina comfortable using the heavy battle rifle.

"Oh, okay." She lifted the barrel from her hip. "Like that, right?"

"No," Dimitri said. "Fire from the shoulder."

"But my targeter has a lock from down here!"

Dimitri shook his head. "That doesn't matter. What matters is keeping your posture. From the shoulder, you can pivot and retarget easier. From your hip there's too much resistance and too much reliance on the targeter."

"Fine." She lifted the rifle. "Like that?"

The butt was under her armpit, her grip on the forehandle was slipping, and the barrel was off center.

"Not quite," Dimitri said. He stepped up behind her and gripped her rifle in his gloves. He moved the butt flush with her shoulder and her hands into the right grips, then tilted her head down in line with the rifle's spine. "There you go. Do you have a lock now?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." Dimitri stepped back. "Fire away."

She squeezed, the Impaler roared, and the fountain exploded. Dust rushed out from the destruction and pieces of the angel fluttered down as powder.

"Good shot," Dimitri said.

Yevina looked at him, grinning from ear to ear. "That… was entertaining," she said.

Dimitri smiled. "I thought you were having fun there."

There was silence for a moment in the inches between their faces. Their grins fell away, replaced by something else. Dimitri couldn't describe it.

And then it went away.

"So, more of that?" she asked, moving away.

"Uh, yeah, more of that," Dimitri said. "We'll just work on shooting for today. Hopefully you won't have to do any more than that in the field."

"Very well."

"Good." Dimitri took a breath. Throne, but that got intense. He had to watch himself here, he thought. Getting involved with Cardigan would be… well, he couldn't find anything wrong with it at the moment, but it just seemed like a bad idea.

Whatever had happened wasn't anything important. She just lost her brother and he, up till this point, hated her guts. After all, she was a pompous bitch. That's how things worked.

He needed to say something. In lieu of any other options, he repeated himself. "Good, good," then, "Here's another magazine."

1208

The shuttle ride to Xanthius's spire was quiet for a long while, mostly because there were only two occupants and Jax was too busy washing his own blood away from his broken nose to speak. Apparently, his bi-weekly sparring session with Valdon had gone about as well as expected. Today, he only had the broken nose in contrast to the three shattered ribs and cracked breastplate of last time.

After a few minutes of stuffing rags up his nose, Jax spoke, his voice nasally. "So, you fuck her or what?"

Dimitri didn't look up from his paperwork. "That's not funny."

Jax looked over. "Something happen?"

"Yes, something."

"But you didn't fuck her?"

"No."

Jax paused. "Blowjob?"

"No."

"Eat her out?"

"No."

"You mack face?"

"No!"

"Give her mangle-mash?"

"No—what the hell is that?" Jax held up a total of seven fingers and started wedging them together in a strange way. Dimitri pushed his hands down. "Forget I asked. We just had a moment. That was all."

"A hand-in-her-pants moment?" Jax pressed.

"No, Jax," Dimitri muttered. "We just looked at each other."

"What the hell does that do?"

"Nothing! Holy Terra, Jax, have you never just looked at a woman in the eyes before?"

"Not really." Jax shrugged. "But I ain't you."

"Exactly!"

"If you wanna look like a wimp-ass in front of yer girlfriend, then it ain't my problem."

That got Dimitri's attention. "What'd you call me?"

"Wimp-ass." Jax looked over at him. "How far apart was ya when you had that 'moment'?"

"Inches."

"Shoulda kissed her."

"How do you figure that?"

Jax ticked off his reasons as he said them. "One: she was close to you. Two: she wasn't trying to get away from you. Three: you had a romantic fag moment. Four: you shoulda fuckin' kissed her."

The shuttle touched down on the landing pad and the door cracked. Dimitri stood first and started past Jax.

When he was at the ramp, he turned and held up a finger. "We're not done talking about this."

Jax grinned. "Anytime, buddy."

(' ')

High Lords did nothing half-way. Xanthius's dining hall was the size of the council chamber, and upon entering, Dimitri and Jax were assailed with the sound of a full choir singing from one of the balconies. The guests stopped what they were doing and applauded them, and from the head of the room, Xanthius himself beckoned.

It took them a full five minutes to wade through the droves of priests, artisans, generals, admirals, governors, traders, and adepts to reach the High Lord. When they did, they found him perched on a throne at the head of the room, his back held rigid by a complex of ironwork struts attached to his spine. He craned his neck to see Jax, and shook they shook hands, the Confederate careful not to break the man's frail hand.

"Xanthius," he said, kneeling beside the throne. "It's good to see ya."

The High Lord smiled. "Likewise, Battle Saint. And you as well, Equerry Vlasna."

Dimitri nodded in respect and backed away from the two. Best to let Jax do his job, he figured.

"You ain't looking too well, Xanthius," Jax said. "Everything alright?"

Xanthius gave him a look, a look that Jax knew all too well. He had seen it many times growing up from the old men in the bars and the ranches of Antiga Prime. It was the look of an old-timer busy watching the end of his life coming; the look of a guy who had everything figured out but didn't care much about any of it any more.

"Do you know why I named you Battle Saint?" he asked.

"Uh, because the Emperor wrote—"

Xanthius scoffed. "No, no, no, none of that nonsense."

"But Tripe said—"

"Inquisitor Tripe can take his secret tablets and shove them up his rear," Xanthius said. "They're nothing. The Emperor wrote a lot of things, and he may even have facilitated your coming here, but none of that matters. In the end it is our decision, and in the end, we should not have named you Battle Saint. There are too many things wrong with you regarding your character, and in this world, you just do not fit in."

Jax looked at him. "So, why did you?"

"Because you're different. You're what this galaxy needs." Xanthius broke into a coughing fit. It took him a full minute to recover from it, and when he did, he spoke with more power, as though angered by his own frailty. "The Imperium is like me, Jax. It has been dead for a long time, but refuses to acknowledge it. The galaxy has been picking at its corpse for ten thousand years. Nothing we can do will revive it, and we cannot hope to replace it with anything better.

"That said, we will not slip quietly away into the void. The last dregs of whatever humanity is left out there needs something to look up to that's more inspirational than—throne help me—a dead god. I believe you are that something."

Jax frowned. "We've talked about this before, Xanthius. I know my job. What's new here?"

Xanthius grinned. "Just a specific detail, Battle Saint. This is my death party. I am disconnecting my life support tonight, and by sunrise tomorrow, I will be nothing more than a withered corpse. Upon my death, every ounce of wealth that I have accrued over my thousand years of life will be transferred to you, just as will my position."

Jax blinked. "Uh, Dimitri? Dimitri!"

Xanthius stopped him, setting his hands atop the glove that Jax rested on the arm of the throne. His weak grip had not a chance in hell of physically stopping the Confederate, but it did so nonetheless.

"Battle Saint, listen to me. You _will_ take my place, and with my resources you _will_ expand your Dogs of War to legion strength."

"What for?" Jax asked.

"What have we been talking about? To save humanity!"

Jax was silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, he did so quietly. "You want me to accept this?"

"No," Xanthius replied. "I signed the dictatus a month ago." He smiled. "You really had no choice in the matter."

Somehow, Jax found a smile, too. "Well, fine then. You wanna hurry up and die?"

For the first time in many years, High Lord Xanthius laughed.

**Author's Note: This chapter was running a tad long and the rest threw the pacing all to hell, so you'll get the other half next week to close out this arc and move on to the next one. I swear there will be more fighting. Soon.**

**Also, I'm currently making an effort to stop focusing so much on Jax and Dimitri. It's hard, though, so it may take some time, but I'll be damned if I don't explore the impact of a Battle Saint on every level of Imperial society. What I mean to say is this: be ready for some serious shit in the coming chapters. While humor is great, I'm about tired of fart jokes every ten sentences, so fair warning.**

**Oh, and don't expect that Gort spin-off for the next couple of weeks. I want to write all of it before I start posting. It won't be long, though; more like what we comics fans know as a 'limited series'. Should be fun, though. Tripe and Gort are an interesting pair.**

**More teleporting, energy-blasting shenanigans next week. Later.**

***Submitting a review to the Confederate is appreciated, and fuels the ongoing pursuit of a million words and one thousand reviews. Do it, or the Inquisition will find you.  
**


	34. Chapter 34: R&R: Beyond the Infinite

Dimitri looked up and realized that the evening's musicians were perched on concentric circles that rose around the chamber, crawling higher up the spire's interior. A chandelier ran down the middle of the airspace. Made of long crystalline icicles, it dangled from the top of the vaulted ceiling one hundred feet up and only cleared the dance floor by eight meters.

"Throne of Terra," Dimitri muttered. He took a glass of port from a passing servitor and downed it like he would a trench shot in the Guard. The expensive drink refused to burn his throat, though, and tasted more like grape punch. "Damnit," he muttered.

"Equerry Vlasna?"

That was a woman's voice. The realization seized Dimitri's stomach and held it in thrall. Only one woman at this party could possibly recognize him.

"Marie Xanthius," he muttered. Turning around confirmed his suspicion.

"Madam Xanthius!" he said, striving hard to sound earnest in his happiness. "You look beautiful this evening." At least that was the truth. She was showing enough cleavage in her tight dress to suffocate a dog. "How have you been keeping?"

"Well, Equerry. Quite well. I see you have yet to lose your class even after associating with that pack of dogs you call friends."

She grinned, giving Dimitri the sudden urge to break her teeth. Instead of acting on it, his mouth took over and did what it did best.

"Well, madam, if you'll permit a dog a dance, I think you'll see just how refined we can be." He offered his arm. "I assure you, this super-hardened battleplate is actually much more comfortable to touch than appearances would warrant."

Marie set her hand in his glove. "I suppose I could allow just a short dance."

_It'd be shorter if I could cap it off by dropping you from a balcony_, Dimitri thought, then said, "I'm honored, madam."

As much as he hated to admit it, Dimitri found the mandatory dancing lessons from his days at the schola taking over before he knew it. Dimitri moved with self-surprising fluidity, his back held rigid as if Sister Cetrius was still behind him, walking stick primed to beat him senseless for slouching. His suit hummed gently with the motions, his footsteps light and clearing Marie's feet with ease, which was good. If he were to step on her toes even by accident, he would surely pulverize her foot.

"Do you still hold your position in the Inquisition?" he asked.

Marie shook her head. "No, it failed to be as fulfilling as I had hoped. I tendered my resignation soon after returning to Terra."

"Oh, I see." Dimitri chose not to bring up the fact that Xanthius had faked her membership. The last thing he wanted to do was shatter her ignorance. "So how do you occupy your time as of late?"

The heiress looked into his eyes. "Oh, nothing much."

Dimitri knew the 'I-want-to-talk-about-something-but-don't-want-to-appear-like-I-do-so-ask-me-so-I-can-talk-about-it-and-still-be-in-charge' tone when he heard it. It made him sick to his stomach, but he played along.

"Please, madam, don't be coy." He put a grin on his face that made him feel ashamed to be alive. "You've piqued my curiosity."

"Well, I would hate to leave you in thrall. I have, embarrassingly so, allowed myself to be courted."

"Wonderful!" _That poor bastard._ "Who should have such luck?"

"Warmaster Slavere," she replied.

Dimitri thought back to his one meeting with Slavere some months ago, upon returning Marie to Terra. A young Cadian, posh, not accustomed to being told no. He was in charge of the Perseus Crusade, something that Dimitri had heard little of.

"Wonderful," he said, drawing her into a low, slow dip. "What do you intend to do with him?"

Marie shrugged. Her breasts squished together, and suddenly Dimitri understood why this Slavere put up with her.

"I haven't the faintest," she said. "Gregory is a fine man, but I can't help but feel my place is here on Terra. My father is in his twilight hours, and everyone knows he is going to name his successor at some time tonight. I am certain that successor will be me."

"Battle Saint Fredrick Jax," Xanthius's voice rang out across the chamber, "will take up my position as Master of the Administratum, and Overseer of the Council of High Lords upon my demise."

"No!" Marie shouted. Dimitri dropped her and stepped up to the throne, pushing through the applauding crowd.

"Jax!" he shouted. "Jax, what the hell is going on?"

"Shh!" Jax replied. "I'm getting more stuff for you to do paperwork about!" He looked out at the rest of the party and held up his hands. "People, I'm here to tell y'all that I'm gonna be a great President for the Senate, and that everything is gonna be great under my command!"

The applause rose in pitch. In exasperation, Dimitri looked over at Xanthius.

"Lord." He tried to find the words. "Just… why?"

Xanthius smiled. "Because, my boy, after I'm gone, I could care less what people think of me, and if I want to delegate my position to a rude, custom-destroying train wreck of a politician, then damnit I will do so. Have fun."

"With another eight hours tacked onto my already full day?" Dimitri crossed his arms and watched Jax go on some ranting speech, getting everyone fired up. "Yeah, I'll do that."

Xanthius laughed. It sounded like plates shattering on a stone floor. "You'll grow to love it, my boy. Just give it some time."

"I'll take your word for it." Dimitri gave the High Lord a bow. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get Jax to teleport us to a beleaguered hive world. There is a rebellion stirring and I have a feeling his sermonizing could do something to put that down."

"What hive world?"

"Keyido IV."

"Promise them food." Xanthius coughed. "That got them to quiet down when I was younger, back in 231 or so."

Dimitri stared at him. "You know, it's a damn shame that you're going to die."

"You are telling me, Equerry." Xanthius nodded toward the door. "Now get to it, boy. The galaxy needs the two of you."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 34: Rest and Relaxation: Part 3: Beyond the Infinite_

Adamus looked across the landing field. "I find myself confused."

"Why?" Tharok rumbled.

"I set my beastmen loose on this world, and when they return to my call, they have quadrupled their numbers." His fingers drummed on the hilt of his sword. "Therefore, I am confused. How did these creatures manage to rut so much? Were they killing nothing?"

"Reports would indicate otherwise," Drake pointed out. "Settlements across this world have been razed to the ground. Aside from a few die-hard guerilla detachments, all resistance has been crushed."

"Extraordinary." Adamus took a last look across the assembled hordes of beastmen, half a million total spread across the savannah, and nodded. "_Sandalphon_, how many ships have we captured in-system?"

"Three, lord." The strike cruiser's voice filled his mind. "Two freighters and a mass conveyance vessel."

"What happened to that escort ship?"

"It tried to run," _Sandalphon_ replied. "I stopped it."

Adamus sighed. "Fine. Send down troop ships. We'll need the space to house these new additions."

"Yes, lord."

"Omnios, silence the beacon," Adamus said. "We've recalled enough of these creatures."

The sorcerer inclined his head and moved away to deactivate the black stone beacon at the heart of the landing site. As he started chanting and intoning and whatnot, Adamus turned back to the planet he had conquered.

"So, what of these guerillas?"

"Just some local Guard and Sororitas up in the hills," Drake replied. "They're hardly worth our attention."

Adamus grinned. "Maybe so, but the loading will take a good four hours. Are you up for some sport, Sergeant?"

Drake looked up from his dataslate in surprise. "Me?"

"Yes you, Drake. Contrary to popular belief it is possible for me to forgive you of your former failings." He smiled again, knowing it unnerved the ex-Blood Angel. "Now do you want to stretch your wings or not?"

"Yes, War Captain."

"Then bring me an assault pack," Adamus ordered. "If we're going to do this, we will do it right."

(' ')

"So that is why, starting today and continuing for the rest of the decade, this world will benefit from a dietary budget supplied in full by the High Court of Terra. No more starving children!"

The sound of 500,000 cheering hivers met Jax's announcement, followed by eight billion more as the entire city heard the message, broadcast on pictscreens on spire sides for miles around.

Keyido Prime shook, and Dimitri felt the balcony under his feet vibrate. He turned to the man next to him. "Governor Wexias, was that from the cheering?"

The Governor shook his head. "Throne no, Equerry. That was a hivequake. Borough Seven probably collapsed again." He took a dataslate from an orderly and scanned it. "Oh look, it was Seven." He looked at Dimitri. "This happens every few months. Onyx mine support stanchions below that section wither and collapse, caving in the whole Borough. It plays hell with our output."

Dimitri looked sideways at Animal Mother, who was standing guard over Yevina as her designated bodyguard. The big Catachan raised his eyebrows in surprise. Yevina caught his glance as well, and merely shrugged.

"That's normal?" Dimitri asked.

"Yes." Wexias poured himself a glass of port. "Drink?"

Dimitri shook his head. "No thank you, Governor. I have some work to do before we depart." He walked away without another word.

Yevina stepped up in his place. "I could use something, Governor."

Dimitri tuned out the rest of the conversation as he called up a blank recording bank on his HUD. "Application for food aide to Keyido IV hive world, begin recording."

As he spoke out what would later be transcribed into a written request by a servitor and then fed to the monstrous Administratum for processing and execution, Dimitri kept tabs on Jax's speech. The crowds loved it, and Jax carried the prepared lines well. The sing-along program in the Confederate's visor probably helped with the delivery.

He finished the report just as Jax capped off the speech and bade the city farewell before stepping off the balcony and back into the spire proper. Dimitri met him by the governor, who was still chatting with Yevina. How she kept up the interested look, Dimitri would never know.

"Battle Saint," Wexias said, bowing to Jax. "We thank you for coming to our world. If ever we can be of assistance, just let us know."

Jax nodded. "Well, that's rightly nice of ya, Governor, and I suppose I'll take ya up on that offer right now as a matter of fact."

Wexias's expression shifted. "Oh?"

"Yup," Jax said. "See, I got this little friend—"

"Arsehole," Menshaw muttered. Dimitri looked down in surprise. He had completely forgotten they had even brought him along, and judging by the look on Menshaw's face, the Ratling realized this.

"—and all he wants is a lady friend. See, he hasn't, y'know, for a while now, and if you could just find it in yer heart to give him some help in that department, we'd be about even."

"Still think he's an arsehole?" Manker asked.

Menshaw crossed his arms. "Eh, whatever. Its not like this guy's gonna give me his daughter or anything like that."

"A lady for one of the Dogs of War? Of course!" Wexias gestured to one of the female party guests. "Sharona! Sharona, come dearest!"

The woman was younger than Dimitri and quite beautiful if he were to be truthful. She had hair as black as a raven's feathers and deeply tanned skin, only serving to heighten the length of her shapely legs.

"This is my daughter, Sharona," Wexias explained.

Manker looked down at Menshaw and raised his eyebrows. The Ratling scoffed, and then nudged Dimitri in the waist. "Hey, where do I stash my armor?"

Dimitri sighed.

(' ')

After Menshaw finished making official political ties between the Dogs of War and the monarchy of Keyido IV, Jax took a hit off a lascannon battery and jumped the whole unit to Graymalkyn in the Ultima Pacificus. As the largest shrine world in its Segmentum, Graymalkyn's priesthood was well respected in the surrounding systems.

Establishing a relationship with them was essential to securing support for the BattleSaint in the area, a difficult task for any religious figure, considering the conservative nature of the Pacificus's believer base.

Two hundred Dogs marched the Forever Road of Graymalkyn, a fifty-mile avenue of marble through an uninhabited temple city, lined by statues of primarchs and chapter masters of the Astartes. At the end, Jax led the command squad into a sanctum filled with white-robed Honor Guards of the Cult Imperialis Pacificus and their charges, the High Priests of Graymalkyn.

Jax demonstrated his worth in a test never before issued by the priesthood, one meant to determine his faith and abilities simultaneously.

When it was over, Jax had recited six different passages from vague religious texts and cut down all twenty Honor Guards single-handed. Well, Dimitri helped with the passages over a closed com line, but the killing of the Honor Guards was all Jax.

The blessing was given, ties established, and Jax had a new symbol burned into his shoulder pauldron by the time they left.

When they jumped next, they were bound for Ultramar.

(' ')

The attack came swiftly as two blares of jetwash and the crack of lasguns. The guardsmen at the perimeter of the camp fired as soon as they saw the Traitor Astartes screaming in out of the blood-red sky. They were well-trained men and each shot hit its mark.

It mattered little. The fallen Marines wore warplate that shrugged the las-fire aside like it was nothing, and the first guardsman fell before he could get a second shot off. The next four died shortly thereafter, their bodies opened and bleeding on the rocks in rapid succession.

Sister Superior Amaranth Vilverin heard the screams and stood from the makeshift altar at the rear of the command cave. Her black and red Sororitas power armor was anointed with the little holy water she had left, and she counted six shots left in her bolter.

Her chainsword was in remarkable condition considering the weeks she had spent moving through Conventia's hills since the start of the planet's downfall. It could cut solid steel with ease, and it would serve her well as she died here.

One of the Traitor Marines arrived in the mouth of the cave, his sword weighed down by the impaled form of Sister Saphrona, the only other battle sister to have made it this far.

Amaranth exhaled. If Saphrona was dead, then that meant the perimeter guard had fallen, and she was the last one left. It also meant that her own death was imminent.

Ms. Vilverin knew this was coming, had known it ever since the main chapel fell on day one of the invasion. She had prepared for it the entire time she had been running, steeling herself against the inevitable and praying for her soon-to-depart soul. The only consolation Amaranth possessed was the knowledge that she would go down fighting by the adamantine teeth of her chainblade.

She muttered a prayer and flipped the ignition switch with her thumb. The chainsword's engine sputtered, misfired, and coughed into silence.

Amaranth looked down at it. "Really? Really you piece of shi—"

The Traitor Marine crossed the cavern in a heartbeat and slammed her against the wall, his ironclad grip on her throat staunching her cry.

The Chaos Lord's face was oddly clean for such an evil creature. Instead of blackened fangs and pale skin stretched across a skull, he had a—dare she say it—handsome face. When he spoke, his voice was unnervingly soothing.

"I am Adamus Luchance," he said, "and you will be my spoil of war."

Sister Superior Amaranth Vilverin called him an arsehole. It came out as a hiccup, and he knocked her unconscious.

(' ')

There was a bright light, a crackling explosion, and two hundred Dogs of War stood in the center of the destroyed city. Rifles up, the Dogs panned out across the area, sweeping for hostiles. Even as the last ozone-swelling effects of the teleportation sloughed off their armor, a round of clear signals was already sounding from the out-squads.

Jax let go of Yevina's shoulder and slammed his visor back. "What the hell is this?"

Dimitri looked up, and through spots in the smoke-strewn sky was able to confirm their location. "The stars are right. I just have no idea where all the Ultramarines are."

"Or why the city's trashed." Jax rolled a statue's severed head over with the toe of his boot. "I don't know much, but these boys seemed a might too prissy to be livin' in squalor."

"No, I'd imagine not," Dimitri replied. "Maybe we ought to do a bit of searching?"

Jax nodded and turned around, activating the unit-wide com channel. "Okay, people, start hunting. I want evidence of Smurfs, livin' or otherwise, pronto."

As the Battle Saint continued supervising the search, Yevina moved to Dimitri's side. Animal Mother, the member of the command squad saddled with her complete protection, hovered nearby.

"We _are_ at the right coordinates," she whispered.

"I believe it. How have these jumps been from your perspective?"

"Different than the first time. Then I just concentrated on the Astronomican and we jumped. This time was more coordinated. I felt more in control, I guess."

"That's good," Dimitri replied.

He was going to say more, but his visor blared a proximity warning in his ears. He whipped around, rifle coming up, and locked his targeter on a man in tattered blue robes. His suit scanned the man, the weapon results coming back negative.

He blinked open a channel. "Vlasna to all, I have positive contact on a civilian. Stand by." He lowered his rifle and held out a hand. "We're here to help. Who are you?"

The man was bleeding from his forehead, and as he responded, he held a torn piece of his clothing to the cut. "Tertius, Chapter Serf to Brother Sergeant Thanus."

"What happened here, Tertius?"

The serf looked at him. "Betrayal."

**Author's Note: That's that, then. We did some planet hopping and saintly stuff, and brought a little more Adamus into the spotlight. Oh, and that girl Amaranth? Do any of you remember her? She's been in the story before. I'm curious if she stuck in your minds.  
**

**Next time we're on to the new arc, which concerns itself entirely with the Ultramarines and what exactly that serf was hinting at. But it _isn't_ Chaos. Seriously, how cheap would that be?**

**Anyway, I'll see you next weekend with more of that serious stuff I've been talking about. Like, really serious stuff. Maybe a death.  
**

***Submitting a review to the Confederate is appreciated, and fuels the ongoing pursuit of a million words and one thousand reviews. Do it, or the Inquisition will find you.**


	35. Chapter 35: Civil War: Burn the Land

Tertius collapsed into Dimitri's arms just as the area exploded with gunblasts, the flat bangs of bolter fire echoed throughout the empty streets. Bolts poured in from everywhere at once, imbedding in the ground and throwing clods of churned pavement skyward.

A bolt blasted Dimitri's shoulder guard apart and spun him around, dragging Tertius with him. He caught the rest of the burst on his armored back. Aside from a ruptured secondary servo calibrator, the damage was all superficial.

"Jax—" he started.

"Return fire!" the Confederate bellowed. "Isolate targets and return fire! Mow 'em down!"

As the rest of the Dogs let rip, Dimitri lowered the injured serf into the base of a marble fountain, hopefully away from the fire exchange. "Yevina, Animal: stay with him!" he ordered.

"On it!" Animal shouted, pulling Yevina into cover with him.

The Navigator shrugged out of his grasp. "Where are you going?" she asked.

Dimitri swung his Impaler up. "To the fight."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 35: Civil War: Part 1: Burn the Land_

Manker had caught not a glimpse of the enemy, but he already knew for certain that he was fighting Ultramarines. The angles of fire, gun swath zones, the dimensions of the killbox he had inadvertently led his men into—all perfect Codex Astartes doctrine. And now the Dogs were paying for it, taking injuries as they struggled to defend a position that made a junkyard look as defensible as the Imperial Palace.

A bolt exploded against his knee guard. Manker stumbled, compensated into a dive for cover, and replied with half a clip along the incoming trajectory. Faintly, he heard the sound of steel tearing. His spikes hit something.

"Lieutenant Manker to the Battle Saint. Sir, I suggest a change of tactics."

"Hold one." Across the battleground, Manker saw a sudden flash of light, followed by the collapse of a building. "Alright. Wanna charge?"

"Yes, sir. I would suggest the southwest flank."

"And why's that?"

"It's the most heavily defended," Manker replied.

Something kicked him in the shin. When he looked down, he saw Menshaw and Sternev staring up at him, their rodent faces scrunched up in anger.

"What's that about?" Menshaw shouted. "You a gakking idiot? We're not charging into a death trap!"

"Yeah!" piped Sternev. "We're not charging into a deathtrap!"

"What was that?" Jax asked.

"Please hold, Battle Saint." Manker muted his helmet mic. "Do you hold the rank of lieutenant anymore?"

Menshaw's frown deepened. "No."

"Then you will follow my plan." Manker swapped back. "Back, sir."

"Good. So, southwest it is. Give me a moment to clear a path, alright?"

"Yes, Battle Saint."

(' ')

Jax fired a burst of shots into the smoke at the edges of the courtyard, driving the attackers into cover for a moment. "Castarius, I need a jump."

The Techmarine drew up the form of his destabilization ray emitter. It was a prized artifact of his former chapter, something that he had brought with him to Mars so long ago. The weapon was capable of supercharging objects on a molecular level, typically resulting in vicious combustion. Now, he held the barrel to Jax's palm and squeezed the trigger, charging the Confederate's energy reserves.

Jax's body tingled as his metabolism converted the sudden influx of unstable energy into… well, whatever kind of force he was going to project from his palms here in a minute. Jax had no concept of what that energy force was, but he felt no concern. All he knew was how to do it. Everything else, in his opinion, was unimportant.

He felt a jolt strobe along his spine. "Yow, alright! I think I'm full!"

Castarius pulled his weapon away and began using it on the incoming fire. They still had yet to actually see the Ultramarines, but he knew they were there. Like Manker before him, Castarius knew his Codex, and this was completely textbook.

Jax reloaded his Impaler. "Okay, I'm moving. Dogs, form on me!"

(' ')

Dimitri followed Jax into the fray, covering him with whatever fire he could put out as the Dogs charged the cathedral on the southwest approach. Bolts poured down from the cathedral's spires with a rhythmic chug-chug-chug, and Dimitri could place the Devestator squads manning them. Finally, he had visual confirmation of Ultramarines, at least two in each of the three towers, all armed with heavy weapons.

A lascannon blast lanced down from the tower and destroyed the Dog next to him, vaporizing the man's body from the waist up. The rest of the fallen soldier's squadmates returned fire with their underslung rocket launchers, ripping the face from the tower and burying the Ultramarines in rubble. It was far from a permanent solution, but it would do until Jax—

"Clear!" the Confederate bellowed, coming to a sudden halt. He thrust both his palms out before him, wrists touching, and shouted back. "Firing!"

A high-pitched shriek grated against Dimitri's eardrums, shaking the rubble in the street and rattling the church's few remaining windowpanes. It reached its peak and a lance of white light exploded from Jax's position.

The church fell apart like a house of tarot cards, its stone and mortar collapsing in a cloud of dust. The towers fell to be engulfed by the whirlwind, and as the sunspots cleared from his vision, Dimitri struggled to see anything left standing.

"Cathedral destroyed," Manker reported. "As is the building behind it, and the building behind that, and the building behind that…"

"Move in!" Jax roared. "Kill whatever's left! Go!"

The Dogs moved into the rubble by squads, the sounds of Impaler and bolter fire erupting seconds later.

On a hunch, Dimitri set his com system to cycle through all active vox signals. He found what he was seeking instantly.

"Sergeant Kasick to Brother-Captain Sicarius."

"Go ahead, Brother." Dimitri recognized the voice. It was definitely Sicarius. "Your Devastator fire has ceased. Why?"

"Brother-Captain, we are under attack by hostile forces of the Battle Saint. We are heavily outnumbered. All of their forces are concentrated on our position."

"Understood, Brother-Sergeant. Die well. Ave Imperator."

The line closed and Dimitri felt something cold in his gut. "Jax, the survivors have radioed to say they are outnumbered."

"So?" the Confederate said, watching his Dogs tear the Devastators apart one by one. "They're right. We do got 'em outnumbered. What's the big deal?"

"Jax, being outnumbered means something different to Space Marines. When Astartes get outnumbered, they don't panic, they just try to draw in as many enemies as they can for the rest of the chapter to finish off." Dimitri gestured around them. "And we're on their chapter homeworld. See a problem?"

Just then, a Thunderhawk roared overhead, peppering the area with missile fire. The street exploded in huge swathes, throwing pulverized rockcrete skyward, and the cathedral rubble was engulfed in flame. Seven Dogs' vitals flatlined across Dimitri's HUD.

Two more Thunderhawks burst through the cloud layer and saturated the area with their own payloads, raking the rubble with missiles and heavy bolter fire. More vitals dropped and calls for orders flowed from the embattled Dogs.

"Where do we go!"

"Where are they? I don't have a firing vector!"

Dimitri cut in. "All units, pull back, now! Hostile air support has arrived!"

As affirmatives reached his ears, he saw the first gunship turn from its initial strafing run and angle in again. Its drop bay doors opened, and Dimitri could see its most dangerous payload getting set to fall on them.

Jump packs flared and a full squad of vanguard assault troops dropped from the gunship, powerswords crackling. At their head, bareheaded, was Captain Cato Sicarius of the Ultramarines, and he looked pissed.

"Dimitri, move!" Jax shouted.

He pushed Dimitri out of the way and swung his sword up just as Sicarius slammed into the pavement. Their blades met with a thunderclap, Jax's pure adamantium refracting the energy of Sicarius's powersword and sending strobes of lightning peeling across the battlefield in a twenty foot radius.

"Confederate," Sicarius snarled.

"Super Smurf Junior," Jax replied.

Both men broke away, each repelled by the other's shove, and landed on their feet. The vanguard squad landed around them and sprang forward, all intent on Jax. The Confederate spun and parried blows as they came at him. He grabbed an overhead strike, sapped the energy from the blade, converted it, and hurled it back at his attacker before rolling into a thrust that impaled another Ultramarine.

As he fought, the other Thunderhawks disgorged their payloads: two squads equipped with Terminator warplate. Rhinos arrived from the embattled city, bringing with them chattering storm bolters and squad after squad of Ultramarines. The Dogs, routed from their position in the collapsed cathedral, retreated across the courtyard, exchanging casualties with the Ultramarines as they ran.

Manker ran past and grabbed Dimitri by the shoulder. "Equerry, we must go!"

"No!" Dimitri shook him off and brought up his Impaler with the mob Jax was embedded in. "We've got to help him!"

Jax blocked a sweep and punched the Marine in the throat. "No ya don't! I got this! Head out and I'll find ya later!" Dimitri hesitated. Jax decapitated another soldier and shouted, "Run, damnit!"

And Dimitri did. He ran with Manker all the way back to the fountain and farther still, into the beaten tangle of buildings at the southern end of the city.

(' ')

Jax killed the last assault marine with a sweep to its groin, cutting its leg off and toppling it to the ground. He swung his sword around and drove it through the fallen Astartes's heart complex, a blow that saw the man dead in a matter of seconds.

When he was done, he stood clear of the body and looked around at the approaching Ultramarines. His HUD ticked off twenty Terminators, sixty regular Marines and an array of Rhinos. Three Thunderhawks held position above the battlefield, their massive engines holding them in a hover.

Jax curled his hand into a claw, letting it glow as he held his sword ready. "Alright, who wants it next?"

Sicarius spoke up next. "Battle Saint, you must realize how futile this fight is for you. We outnumber you almost a hundred to one, and you have no hidden tarot to play in your favor. We will not engage you in hand-to-hand, and even with your impressive ranged abilities, you will not stand up to more than thirty seconds of sustained fire from our side. So, I implore you, surrender yourself peacefully."

No sooner had he stopped talking than Jax hit him with an energy blast. The impact tossed the leader of the Ultramarines twenty feet, his chest piece exploded.

Seconds later, the rest of the Ultramarines returned fire on his behalf, and the Confederate fell to his knees.

(' ')

"Stop and form up! Defensive positions, now!"

On Manker's order, the Dogs of War ceased their retreat and took up firing angles along the street. Boots kicked in walls and squads filed into buildings along the boulevard, taking up firing positions in windows that gave them trajectories down most of the side streets.

Ammo and personnel counts began ticking off on Manker's visor, his mind assimilating them with the rapidity of a machine. As he thought through the situation, the Kriegan Lieutenant moved around the block, tweaking firing angles and deployment locations by hand. When he was done, there was not a place within three blocks that would hide a Ratling from their wrath, let alone something as bulky as a Space Marine.

"How are we?" Dimitri asked as Manker rejoined the command squad. The Equerry was surrounded by Animal Mother, Yevina Cardigan, and the two Ratlings—Menshaw and Sternev.

"In a bad way. If they hit us with another attack, we'll be annihilated," he replied honestly.

"Well, shit," the Navigator, Cardigan, said.

"What makes you think they're coming after us?" Menshaw asked. "Do you have some kind of telepathic link or—"

"He's right," Dimitri cut in. "They're coordinating the attack right now."

Menshaw looked up at him. "How do you know?"

"Our suits are equipped with telecommunications equipment far in advance of the standard Imperial vox. I've been listening to their transmissions since we arrived." He paused for a moment, listening. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped to a whisper. "They're saying Jax is dead."

Yevina was the first to respond. "How—"

"No time," Manker barked. "Manker to all units: hostile arrivals are imminent. Prepare to defend yourselves."

(' ')

Jax lay on a pile of rubble, his armor beaten and pockmarked, with chunks of bloodied neo-steel scattered around him like a funeral circle. His visor was destroyed, burst when a bolt exploded against his forehead, taking the rest of his face with it. His heart was not beating, as most of his internal organs had been liquefied by a melta-shot. As his body lay steaming, his fingers slipped and let the hilt of his adamantium sword fall to the ground with a dull thunk.

Captain Sicarius stood above the corpse of the Battle Saint, helmet in the crux of his arm and hand on this pommel of his sheathed blade. He felt ashamed that, in the end, the Confederate's death could not have come in single combat, but he appreciated the necessity of scything the man down at range. He ran his fingers across the shattered Aquilla on his chest, where the Confederate's blast had all but destroyed his armor. Had the Battle Saint retained more energy throughout the fight, the blast would have surely killed him. Sicarius was mindful of that much.

"You were a warrior," he muttered, "but foolish. Rest defeated by the sons of Gulliman, heretic."

Sergeant Corvus marched up the rubble and made the sign of the Aquilla across his breast. "Brother Captain, we have tracked the enemy to the southern habs. Our brothers are engaging them now. Do you wish to join them, sir?"

Sicarius nodded slowly. "Yes, Sergeant. Prepare my land raider."

"At once, Brother Captain."

Corvus walked away, the growl of his active armor swallowed by the open courtyard. Sicarius lingered a while longer before he followed suit, leaving the fallen Battle Saint behind.

**Author's Note: Holy crap, right? Sorry I'm a day late on my deadzone, but I was busy on Saturday and sick as a dog on Sunday, so here's a Monday morning kickoff to the new Civil War story arc. Hope you liked it. I think it has enough kick to warrant some comments. That's it for my babbling; see you later.  
**

***Submitting a review to the Confederate is appreciated, and fuels the ongoing pursuit of a million words and one thousand reviews. Do it, or the Inquisition will find you.**


	36. Chapter 36: Civil War: Boil the Sea

Captain Uriel Ventris stood watch outside the mausoleum, looking down the 3,000 steps of marble that led from the base of the mountain to this, its summit. That his company had been forced to mine the Eternity Walk with mines upset Ventris to no end, but he knew it was necessary. The mausoleum was the last bastion of sanity on the whole of Macragge, and Ventris would be damned if it fell to Sicarius's band of fools.

Ventris felt Sergeant Telion before he heard him. It was impossible not to, considering how long each had served the other; first Ventris under Telion during his time as a scout, and now Telion under Ventris with the latter's ascendance to Captain of Fourth Company.

"Old friend." Ventris kept his eyes forward, on the horizon. "What news do you bring me?"

"Our advance teams have confirmation," Telion replied.

Ventris nodded. "So you were right, then?" He got no reply, but had expected none to begin with. "Are they surrounded?"

"Yes, brother."

"Hmm." Ventris turned and marched past his mentor. "I'll notify the Chapter Master. Sergeant, prepare a strike force and a Thunderhawk."

Telion grunted. "You think we will be sent to retrieve the Battle Saint's men?"

"I guarantee it."

With that, Ventris disappeared into the final resting place of Robute Guilliman.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 36: Civil War: Part 2: Boil the Sea_

A rocket exploded against the building, shaking it on its stanchions and sending the stucco face sloughing off like dead skin from bones, leaving the Dogs within vulnerable. A rabid exchange of fire followed, with seven Dogs falling under the heavy barrage. Dimitri helped the counter-fire and counted two dead Ultramarines by his own hand. He was unsure of the peripheral kills. Four, maybe five.

As the Ultramarines continued their advance, Dimitri and the squad he accompanied fell back into a street behind the building, kicking through a wall and dropping to the pavement on their shock absorbers. They had begun moving further into the hab blocks when a Rhino appeared at the end of the alley, the Astartes manning its pintle-mounted storm bolter already turning to bear down on them.

Dimitri put eight spikes in his chest and three in his head, tearing open his helm in just as many directions. Blood washed across the Rhino's top for an instant before a lucky spike from his fellow Dogs detonated the APC's engine.

The APC's walls exploded outward from the blast. Debris clanged against the armor of the surrounding Astartes, doing little but knocking them off balance, and they kept coming.

Dimitri's squad cleared the alley via another improvised door into a building, a heavy bolter churning the pavement to gravel at their heels. Private Vaulsyn caught a round in his right leg and fell through the hole, kicking with his left. His suit's coagulants cut off the bleeding within ten seconds. It would take his screams another hour to finally subside.

As they kept fighting, dying, and retreating, Dimitri began to wonder just why in hell they were trying to kill the Ultramarines.

The sons of Gulliman shot first, no doubt. Had their offense against the chapter led Marneus Calgar to set an ambush of this size just to get back at Jax?

No. The city was already destroyed when they arrived. So this was something more; a civil war. Sicarius had been divided against Calgar over the issue of Jax's interference with the crusade on Kletharka. Sicarius wanted blood, but Calgar said no, and the younger captain had thrown a damn coup. Sicarius had been in charge of the attack himself, and, if reports were to be believed, killed Jax.

Suddenly, Dimitri cared less about why he was fighting. He felt something well up inside him that he had not felt since his time in the Schola, a kind of near-religious hatred. And he wanted it.

Bolts exploded against the wall next to his head. Dimitri ducked the next burst with inhuman speed borne of the machinery that encased his body and returned fire. The Ultramarine sergeant dodged as well, avoiding the spikes by scant inches, and rushed in for the close kill, chainsword blaring. His brothers followed him, and both Astartes and Dogs met in a vicious melee.

Dimitri's combat blade was shadow world tech and had no problem standing up to the sergeant's chainblade. That said, the Ultramarine did have about three feet of reach over him, which caused something of a problem, not to mention decades of experience. If it were not for his armor being so advanced, Dimitri would never have been able to match the Ultramarine's strength or speed, and would be dead by now.

The sergeant clearly knew it, too.

"You do not deserve this power!" he growled, chainblade biting the air inches from Dimitri's face. "You do not deserve to rival the Astartes! Your strength is artificial and not worthy of praise!"

Dimitri screamed and threw the Ultramarine off, slamming him into a wall and burying the combat knife in the bastard's throat, right into the revered gene-seed organ that the Astartes so loved, the source of their beloved super-human strength and abilities.

"And you," he hissed into the Astartes's face, "have strength born of archaic design, failing in its efficiency and over-expensive for its product. You did not earn this gift, and without it you would be powerless. You are not comparable to me. You are the past. We are the future."

Dimitri yanked his knife sideways, snapping neck muscles, breaking vertebrae, and sending the Ultramarine's head to the ground. The corpse dropped after it, and Dimitri stood to his full height in the middle of the street, holding his rifle above him.

He drew in a lungful of air and roared. "They are nothing but flesh and steel! We can beat them! Kill them all! For the Battle Saint!"

The combined voices of every remaining Dog rose in a battle cry. From that sound was born the bloodiest battle ever fought on the surface of Macragge.

(' ')

Scout Sergeant Telion sat at the edge of the Thunderhawk's embarkation bay, watching the burning streets of the southern hab roar past below him. He held his sniper rifle tight with one hand, listening to the vox chatter via the micro-bead stuck in his ear. They had isolated the traitors' channel on the way in, and now Telion was using that to get a feel for enemy placement.

Sicarius's men were pushing into the Dogs' territory through the main hab-ways, moving their armor under the cover of assault Marines on the rooftops. It was a classic Codex tactic with Sicarius's own twist, and it was just what Telion had expected. After all, he had trained Second Company's captain, so it was only right that he be able to predict his every move.

Night was falling, and the city below was lit only by the fires that had broken out across the habs. Sicarius's Thunderhawks had pulled back to the Macragge spaceport for the night, unwilling to risk taking hits in the low-light conditions. The sky was clear.

"Pilot, set down behind the traitors' advance," Telion voxed forward.

"Affirmative, Brother-Sergeant."

One of the eight scouts Telion had chosen for the infiltration leaned over and spoke to him in low tones. "Scoutmaster, I do not understand."

"Please clarify yourself, Leonid."

Telion leaned out of the bay, sighting down through his rifle's night vision scope. He tracked a firefight between two squads as it barreled through building after building, brick breaking under the freight train-like impact of power armor.

Scout Leonid shifted his grip on the bolter in his arms. "We were supposed to extract the Battle Saint's men. If that is our primary objective, then why are we setting down behind the enemy instead of in front of them?"

Telion smiled. Leonid was one of his sharpest pupils, and given time and experience, would make for a fine line officer, maybe even a captain. Questions like these are what made him a good student. Leonid knew when to speak and wasn't afraid to.

"By setting down behind them, we can inflict damage as we move toward our goal." Telion panned his rifle, taking in the sights. "Never underestimate guerilla warfare, lad. Sicarius won't know what hit him."

Leonid nodded. "Thank you, Scoutmaster."

"Don't mention it, lad. You learn best through example."

Telion's smile faded. He only wished the 'example' didn't involve killing former students.

(' ')

Dimitri linked up with Manker in the sixth hour of battle, under an overpass, huddled in a group with the rest of the command squad. The Kriegan lieutenant greeted him with a nod before swinging around a low wall and discharging the rest of his magazine. Dimitri followed his example, assisting him in mowing down three Ultramarines mid-charge.

"Solid hit," Manker sounded. "Three down."

One of the Ultramarines proved him wrong, grabbing its fallen bolter and putting a round through a Dog's visor. The kid's head burst like a melon and he fell, his half-ton of armor denting the pavement.

Dimitri put the Marine down for good with a spike through the heart. "_Now_ there's three down." He looked around. "Where are Menshaw and Sternev?"

"Right here!"

Dimitri looked down to see the two Ratlings crouched in a foxhole, reloading their cut-down Impalers. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't see you down there."

Menshaw made a face. "Seriously? A short-joke now, in the middle of a gakking firefight?"

"I didn't mean—"

"Ah, screw yourself."

Dimitri turned to where Yevina Cardigan was taking cover, shadowed by the hulking form of Animal Mother. "You alright?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied. "Is it true? Is Jax dead?"

Dimitri ignored the question. As reasonable as it was, he could scarcely afford the luxury of acknowledging it now. Losing his concentration on the matter at hand could prove fatal.

Instead, he simply set his hand on her shoulder and gave her what he hoped was a meaningful look. She smiled back, weakly.

Dimitri stepped past her to where the serf, Tertius, was slumped on a pile of rubble. "You," he said, "I don't have much time, so answer me quickly. Has Sicarius betrayed the Ultramarines?"

Tertius nodded. "Along with most of the chapter, sir."

"Balls," Dimitri muttered. He turned to the squad as a whole. "Now then, let's concentrate on getting out of this fix. We can't win straight-up, so that kind of narrows down our options. What do you think, Manker?"

The Kriegan nodded. "We've been retreating south for the past six hours, and they've spread their forces along the three main hab-ways, combing the districts for us. It would be easy for us to concentrate into a spearhead, double back, and punch through them at one point."

"Makes sense," Dimitri said. "Where exactly?"

Manker pointed with two fingers. "There. Straight north, five klicks, dead run. We don't stop for anything."

Dimitri pulled up a topographical map of Ultramar on his visor. "Jax's locator beacon is in that direction. We'll shoot for that." He stood up. "Okay, let's move out."

(' ')

Sicarius left his Land Raider with his command squad, leaving the vehicle to be overseen by Sergeant Corvus, and headed across the street to the bombed hab block in the dark. He was led into the building by one of the Astartes set up as a sentry, and found Vervius and the rest of his squad in the basement surrounding one of their enemies.

Vervius was a Techmarine, and in the lull in the fighting created by the encroaching dark, he had been given some to tinker with one of the captured Dogs. Currently, with Nilhus Oheope siding with Calgar's 'loyalists'—the title galled Sicarius to his core—Vervius was the acting Master of the Forge, and therefore this duty fell to him.

The Dog's head was severed, and his armor was pulled apart in sections to reveal the inner workings. Most of it looked impossible to discern from Sicarius's standpoint, but then, he was no Techmarine.

"What have you learned, brother?" he asked, folding his arms behind his back.

"Not much, admittedly," Vervius replied. "Their armor is highly advanced. Its auspexal abilities in targeting, vox relay, and environment sensory suites are astounding, as is its physical prowess. In combat, the armor can accelerate its user's strength and speed to the level of one of our brothers." Vervius stopped for a moment. "In fact, I would go so far as to equate it to our own, if that were not heresy."

Sicarius nodded. The sentiment was clear: these Dogs of War were not some idle propaganda jest by the Administratum. They were a formidable foe and not to be underestimated.

"Good to know I've not been losing men all day long to amateurs," Sicarius muttered. "I appreciate the notice, brother. Keep me appraised."

"Indeed, Brother-Captain," Vervius replied as his superior left.

Sicarius thought on his way out of the hab about the coming fight. His goal had been to crush the Confederate soon after his rebellion, but now his focus had to shift to reclaiming the Fortress of Hera from Calgar before any cousin Chapters could arrive and assist the old man. Destroying the Fortress was out of the question; he wanted control of the Ultramarines, not their destruction.

Of course, that meant a foot invasion, and while he held the numerical advantage, almost all of the Chapter's heroes had sided with Calgar. It was set to be a hard fight as it was, but with the losses he was incurring here, it would only be harder.

He had to crush the Dogs of War now, without delay. But how?

And then his Land Raider exploded.

Sicarius leapt back from the blast, avoiding a sniper shot that could have taken his head off. Shots rang out again, two, three, four all at once, and his honor guards started to fall, their ornate helms broken by the pinpoint strikes of shooters unseen in the darkened streets.

"Guilliman's blood!" Sicarius roared, opening up in the direction of the first shot.

Sniper fire replied, but it was ineffectual; his fire had suppressed the shooter, and now they were moving on. The signs were all there; this was Telion's work. Calgar had loyalists in the city.

Sicarius lowered his bolter and looked around. Corvus lay by the destroyed Land Raider, his chest opened by a burning chunk of plating. He was dead, that much was certain, but in seeing him, Sicarius solved his predicament: he knew how to deal with these mutts.

Clicking his vox-bead, he sounded off to the whole of his force. "Cato Sicarius to all Ultramarines: Brothers, form up in your transports and proceed to your Thunderhawks. We are making for orbit." He took a last look at the darkened city. "It's time we burned this decrepit place."

(' ')

Torias Telion felt a rock build in his gut as he listened to Sicarius's words. "Damn you, Cato. You always were destructive," he muttered.

Leaning as he was against the cover of a church steeple's wall, Telion gestured to the nearest of his scouts. Leonid moved in the dark and crouched next to Telion, his rifle sighting at the rebels below.

"Scoutmaster?" he asked.

"We're pulling out," Telion grunted. "Get ready to move."

"What?"

Telion frowned down at him. The moonlight, what weak amount there was in the clouded sky, caught his grey eyes in a dull sheen. "You heard me, lad. I've been in orbital shellings before, and I don't have a mind to put you in more than necessary. You'll lead the rest of the men to the Thunderhawk and find the Dogs of War."

"What are you going to do?"

"That's my business, lad. Now get moving."

Leonid held only a moment longer before moving down the line, passing the word. When he was gone, Telion sighed and stroked his beard.

"What a fine mess this is," he muttered. "A fine, fine mess."

(' ')

The Dogs reached the courtyard without much trouble. After finding a weak point in the Ultramarine line, pushing in had been an elementary ordeal, with more to worry about maintaining speed than actually fighting anyone, and aside from the odd civilian coming out of the rubble here and there, no native life had been glimpsed.

Dimitri was thankful for that, at least. The last thing they needed was more fighting.

They passed the fountain and made their way to where Jax had last been seen. Menshaw was the first to find him, and sounded the alert over the command squad commlink. For once, he didn't sound his usual snarky self.

"He's over here."

Dimitri made his way to the Ratling and pushed him aside. He looked down, caught a glimpse of the shattered remains of Jax's face, and looked away.

"No," he muttered. "No, no, no."

Menshaw was still looking, staring down at the body. "He's dead, that's for sure."

Dimitri wanted to hit him for that, wanted to pummel him into the ground and stomp on his stunty corpse for saying such a graceless, insubordinate thing, but did not. Horrible as it was, Menshaw was just being truthful, and as Jax's right hand, he had to accept that.

Besides, beating a midget into the mud was far from a way to inspire the troops.

"Okay," he said, trying to find spit in his suddenly dry mouth, "Animal, you and Yevina carry him."

"To where?" Animal snapped. He gestured around at the city. "Where the hell are we going to carry him to? We're stranded here, Vlasna!"

That was graceless and insubordinate, and Dimitri could hit _him_ for it. So he did. He hit him over and over in the face until he had destroyed the visor and Manker was pulling him off. He screamed at where Animal lay bleeding, alive thanks only to Dimitri's armor's friendly fire protocols. If the suit had not held the servo power to a less-than-lethal level, Animal's head would have been crushed.

When Dimitri finally calmed down, he looked around at the unit. The remaining Dogs were staring at him, waiting for words.

"Anyone else want to test my patience?" He checked each face in turn; there weren't many left. "No? Good. We are taking Jax's body with us. He was a Battle Saint of the Imperium of Man, and he was your commander. He deserves to be…" Dimitri caught his voice again before continuing. "He deserves to be buried properly. Any objections?"

No one said a thing.

"Good. Now then, volunteers?"

156 hands stretched skyward, one for every remaining Dog.

Dimitri nodded. "Good boys."

(' ')

Leonid led the ten scouts through the darkened buildings, leaping from destroyed hab-block to destroyed hab-block through empty window frames and collapsed walls. Not once did they touch the streets below, and not once did any of the men complain about the strain of moving in this unconventional manner.

Leonid led them as Telion had instructed, making his way carefully with each jump, always checking what lay ahead with the night-sight optics in his shooting goggles.

As he came to another street, Leonid held up a fist. Behind him, the scouts scattered to the room's flanks, hunkering behind support columns for the thickest cover. Leonid got down as well and crawled to the edge of the chamber, peaking over the lip of the floor. Four stories below, the street was crawling with Sicarius's traitors conducting their extraction. Astartes in full battleplate moved alongside Rhinos and Predators, supervising the loading of a pair of Thunderhawks at the end of the street.

Leonid drew up his rifle and sighted through the scope, surveying the loading zone. The highest ranking battle-brother present was but a veteran sergeant; Sicarius himself was not present. Leonid sighed, and was about to move on when he saw something near the wing of one of the Thunderhawks. Increasing the magnification, he let the image resolve into something more recognizable.

The image was faint, and the figure hidden by shadow so that only parts of its blue armor could be seen. Still, the outline was unmistakable, even as it moved carefully into the belly of the gunship transport.

Grinning, Leonid turned back to his fellow scouts. "Brothers," he said, "our master stows away on Sicarius's own birds."

Muffled hoorays sounded from the scouts. Leonid pulled back from the lip, still grinning.

"Come, we must move. Our own Thunderhawk is close."

(' ')

The gunship's ramp closed with a groan. Telion watched it, grim faced, from where he crouched behind a stack of fallen brothers. This was far from his first stowaway mission, but this felt different. Not since his time as a scout in training had the old warrior done such a thing against his brothers.

But even that was just training. What he intended to do here, however…

Telion shook the thoughts aside. "One mustn't question the morality of his mission," he muttered, "lest he become weak-minded and fall to the enemy."

Good words, he thought. Codex Astartes words, written by Guilliman himself. Telion had known them by memory for as long as he could breathe, but never before had they held such meaning.

He moved forward in the Thunderhawk, the noise of his movements masked by the roar of the gunship's engines as they clawed for altitude. This particular vessel was loaded entirely with Rhinos and the dead, so aside from a few off-duty drivers, he had little in the way of obstacles to his sneaking.

Telion nudged his way around a Rhino's fender and looked up. What he saw forced him back behind the APC as fast as if he had been shoved. Above him, the Dreadnaught turned on its growling waist gears.

"**Hello?" **it rumbled through its voxcoders. **"Who is there?"**

Telion held perfectly still, rifle gripped in white-knuckled fingers. He drew in a breath, fast and deep, and held it. It would last him five minutes if need-be, and it very well could come to that. Dreadnaughts had the most advanced auspex suites in the Chapter, and when it came to patience, they were immortal.

A tremor rang through the decking, different than those created by the turbulence outside; the Dreadnaught was moving. Gears ground as the walker lowered its great chassis and peered around the corner, its array of picters right next to Telion's head.

"**Scoutmaster?"** it asked.

It moved and found him. He hadn't expected that.

Telion looked at the walker out the corner of his eye, and without another option, replied. "Yes."

"**Scoutmaster, what are you doing here?"** the Dreadnaught's voice was lowered as much as was possible for a walking death engine. **"You are not part of this rebellion."**

Telion frowned and looked up at the Dreadnaught's 'face'; really just a collection of ornately carved battlescapes surrounding a visor. "No, I am not. Who are you? Did I know you in life?"

"**I am Inda Tarrius, Scoutmaster. You mentored me as a neophyte."**

Telion nodded. "Aye, lad. I remember you. I had heard of your…" He dropped the sentence, indicating Tarrius's new body with a wave of his rifle.

"**Yes,"** Tarrius sighed. **"Eighty years, now, I have been like this. Entombed in this… tomb." **The Dreadnaught chuckled. **"Forgive me, Scoutmaster. I've never been a adept with my words."**

"Why do I yet live?" Telion asked point blank. "You could have crushed me by now."

Tarrius leaned back on his piston-legs in surprise. The Thunderhawk rocked with his movement. **"Oh, you have my apologies, Scoutmaster. I did not state my intentions."** He leaned in again, dropping his 'voice' to a secretive level. **"I did not join Sicarius's traitors to destroy our Chapter. I intend to save it, Scoutmaster, by sacrificing myself in battle against the entire rebel force."**

Telion was speechless for a full twenty seconds. When he found his voice, he clapped Tarrius on the power claw. "Damn fine plan, lad. I taught you well."

"**Thank you, Scoutmaster."**

"Now then," Telion said, holding up what was left of his melta bombs, "want some help?"

(' ')

The casket was assembled from slabs of debris, constructed of the rubble the city had become. Slabs of rebar held together a surface made of shattered rockcrete, and the hinges of a detonated APC ramp connected the box to a lid of scrap metal. All of it was welded together by Castarius, and the Battle Saint was lowered into place with due care.

Now the casket was carried on the backs of his Dogs. Rain splashed its surface as they carried it through the darkened streets, covered from every angle by squads. No one spoke and no one complained; it mattered not how long they had served him, these soldiers were as much sons of the Confederate as any blood relative. They had loved him, and that love continued on after his death.

Dimitri led the procession with the command squad, moving at a speed walk toward the edge of the city. Picket teams searched the rubble for a fallout bunker; anything that would shield them from the coming bombardment.

The vox-intercepts had been clear: the Ultramarines were pulling out. An orbital attack was imminent. CMC armor was durable, but not rated against plasma torpedoes. Without shelter, the Dogs would be annihilated.

We probably should be moving faster, Dimitri thought, given the circumstances. The men's reserve was not altogether surprising, though. Losing Jax was more than a simple blow to morale; for them, it was like losing the Emperor. Even the Kriegans had their visors shut to hide their tears.

"He'll be back," Dimitri said over the comm. He didn't know why; it just seemed right to say it. "He's been through death once before, and he'll be back."

Just then, the sky lit up with the roar of engines cranked to escape velocity. The lights streaked straight up, moving slowly at first but gaining speed as the sounds of their passing faded into the echo-swallowing avenues.

"Thunderhawks," Manker muttered. "They are finally leaving."

Dimitri watched the lights fade into the inky sky. "Yeah, and we're screwed."

As he watched, another Thunderhawk appeared over the rooftops. This one was much closer, and much more heavily armed. And it was heading right for them.

Dimitri yanked his Impaler up. "All units: scatter!"

(' ')

Leonid watched over the pilot's shoulder as the Dogs moved to cover and opened fire on his ship. Since the incident with Second Company, the Dogs' spike rifles had gained much notoriety amongst the ranks of the Ultramarine scouts, achieving almost a legendary status. Bunkroom talk of the weapons' shredding power was all the rage, and to feel it now against the hull, Leonid was not disappointed.

It sounded like the focused rage of a thunderstorm assaulting the armor, and in places, the bulkheads were denting.

"Astounding," he muttered, ignoring the pilot's curses. He keyed his mic. "This is Acting Scout Sergeant Leonid to any Dogs of War commanders in the area: we are friendly. Please, cease fire!"

(' ')

Manker emptied the rest of his magazine in a tight cluster on the Thunderhawk's nose and dropped down to reload. "Equerry, do we cease fire!"

"Hell no!" Dimitri shouted back. "He's lying! Bring that thing down!"

(' ')

The rate of fire clanging against the Thunderhawk increased, and the pilot had to jerk the controls to avoid a salvo of rockets. As the gunship stabilized, Leonid caught himself on the arm of the vacant copilot's chair. A spike broke through the glass and slammed into the bulkhead where his head had been but an instant before.

"Damn, this isn't working." He leaned forward. "Gunnery servitor, commence suppressive fire protocols. Do not harm them."

"Roger," droned the servitor.

(' ')

Heavy bolters mounted on the front of the gunship powered up and let loose a hail of fire, tearing the Dogs' position apart in seconds. Debris flew from the pavement and hammered against neo-steel, and the soldiers around Dimitri dove for cover. Seconds later, he followed suit, holing up beneath a broken footbridge with the pallbearer squad.

At full strength, they could have won this, but with only 100 Dogs and some change left over from the day's battle, and not a living saint to their name, they could no more stand up to this gunship's armaments than they could move mountains.

After a moment, the fire ceased and the voice from before spoke again. "Now then, I am Acting Scout Sergeant Leonid. Dogs of War commander, we are friendly. We are loyalists under Marneus Calgar, Master of Ultramar. He does not wish you to die, and we ask that you accompany us back to the Fortress of Hera before the traitors bomb this city into memory."

Dimitri shifted in the dirt and clicked his helmet mic. "Manker, you hear that?"

"Yes," the lieutenant replied.

"Thoughts?" Dimitri asked.

Across the way, tucked in a ditch with four other Dogs, Manker frowned. "I don't like it, sir, but it's the only way out of this situation without loosing the rest of the team."

"So you say go for it?"

Manker nodded. "Yes, I do."

Dimitri needed and stood up. Cranking his externals to full, he stepped up on a mound of bricks and shouted back.

"Okay, we believe you. Set down up the street and let's do business. I don't think we have much time."

**Author's Note: Aaaand out right before the deadzone expires. Sorry, this was a lot to proofread, and I most likely still missed a few mistakes. In any case, I think it's a pretty fun chapter, if only for the Telion stuff. I really do like him; he may be my favorite cannon Astartes of all time.**

**This arc is going to be two more chapters at least, and then we'll be on to another adventure. I'm on a seemingly impossible quest to find the perfect juncture for a six-month time-lapse in this story, but it has been eluding me. Maybe that'll be next. Or we'll, y'know, have Adamus show back up and stomp some ass. I have no clue.**

**Anyway, I won't bore you with a long note this chapter. Later.**

***Submitting a review to the Confederate is appreciated, and fuels the ongoing pursuit of a million words and one thousand reviews. Do it, or the Inquisition will find you.**


	37. Chapter 37: Civil War: Taking the Sky

The Thunderhawk set down on one of the Fortress of Hera's five major landing pads, situated at the heart of the complex's courtyards. Dimitri stepped down from the gunship alongside Leonid, standing just a head higher than the lightly armored scout.

"Where to, Sergeant?" he asked.

Leonid pointed across the complex to a building carved into the face of the mountain, up a flight of stairs a mile long. "There," he said. "The White Mausoleum. The Masters of the Chapter still loyal to Lord Calgar have convened there since the beginning of this crisis."

Dimitri knew what the White Mausoleum was: the final resting place of Robute Guilliman. Within its marbled walls lay the body of a demigod, suspended in death by a stasis field of archaic design. The fact that his genesons would go there for solace during their time of crisis was not surprising.

"Can you show me to them?" Dimitri asked. Behind him, the rest of the Dogs were moving out of the gunship, carrying Jax's casket between them. Dimitri tried to ignore it.

"It is imperative that I speak with Lord Calgar immediately," he said. "Between our forces, there may be a way out of this situation."

Leonid nodded. "Very well, Vlasna. Follow us." He slung his rifle. "We're taking the stairs."

At the top of the mountain of marble, Uriel Ventris watched the conversation through a bolter scope. Though he could not hear them from this distance, he noted the one thing that mattered to him.

"Telion is not with them," he muttered, lowering his bolter.

The man next to him spoke, his voice coming from within the blue psyker hood that topped his power armor. "He is with Sicarius. In orbit. Do not worry about him."

Ventris raised an eyebrow. "Are you certain, brother?"

"Yes." His face in shadow, Chief Librarian Tigurius grinned. "I am certain, Captain."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 37: Civil War: Part 3: Taking the Sky_

Sicarius entered the bridge at a steady march, his giant strides forcing the serfs at his heels to jog to keep pace. He walked across the space, passing mortal officers at their duty stations that bowed to him, and mounted the command dais.

"Communications, status of the evacuations?" he bellowed. "Are we clear of the coastal region?"

"Yes, lord. All forces have returned to their assigned vessels."

"Good."

Sicarius looked at the hololith spread out below him that displayed the orbital lanes above Macragge. Though he had spent most of his life as a commander of infantry, Cato Sicarius was not a man of limited talent, and understood perfectly well the art of void warfare. So, when he saw what was now on the hololith, it gave him pause.

"Helm, what is this I'm seeing?"

The helm officer turned to face him, but did not meet his eyes. "What, lord?"

"I specifically ordered our fleet into position for a standard-pattern surface bombardment of Macragge City, yet this vessel is not in place." Sicarius glared down at the man. "This is the _Caesar_, mortal. It is the mightiest battle barge in all of the Ultramar fleet. It has destroyed continents on its own, seen whole civilizations ended by its thunder, and it has served as a rallying point around which whole crusades have been launched. And yet, you would stay its wrath. Why?"

The serf looked up at him. The mortal's eyes were filled with tears, no doubt from the stress of facing Sicarius directly, and his body was ramrod straight. With all the power in his lungs, he shouted back.

"Because this is Macragge! Because this is the home world of our people and the birthplace of the Primarch for which this mighty ship was launched!" The mortal pulled his sidearm and aimed it up at Sicarius. "And I for one will not be party to its desecration and destruction by a heretic like you!"

The autopistol barked, its report cutting through the noise of the bridge. The bullets dented against Sicarius's armor, missing any vital point, and dropped to the decking harmlessly.

"Well, damn," Sicarius sighed. He drew his bolter and shot the serf through the chest, exploding him across the helm position. "Who wants to drive the ship?"

"I will, lord!"

Sicarius looked the man over, and the man looked back without fear. To Sicarius, that alone made him worthy.

"Alright, then. Move us into standard bombardment position as per the rest of the fleet's orientation."

"Right away, lord! And may I just thank you for such an incredible honor!"

"Yes, yes," Sicarius muttered, turning the hololithic display. Beyond it, servitors were already scraping what was left of the previous helmsman from his console. "Don't you have some flying to do?"

Ten minutes later, the bombardment began. Sicarius's fleet, all of the Ultramarines' space-faring warships, opened fire at once, filling the atmosphere with contrails of burning plasma and atomics. The malady of fire reached the surface, filling the main continent with a hurricane of destruction. Half an hour later, Macragge City and the three hundred miles of coastline around it were gone, leaving naught but a smoking stretch of glass to mark that it had ever existed.

(' ')

"**I wish it were Chaos,"** Tarrius said as he made their way through the bowels of the _Caesar_. **"I can deal with Chaos. If a brother falls to Chaos, at least his betrayal makes sense. But this… I have trouble understanding this."**

"You aren't the only one, lad," Telion replied. He adjusted his weight, trying to find a comfortable way to hold himself between the Dreadnaught's back-mounted fusion coils. "Sicarius always lacked respect, but we never thought it would come to this."

"**Did you train him, Scoutmaster?"**

Telion braced his back against one of the coils and pressed his boots into the other, holding himself steady against the Dreadnaught's rolling gait. "Yes, I did. Maybe if I had broken him of his Throne-damned arrogance, we wouldn't be in this position." He sighed. "Then again, at the time, I remember thinking it was his strongest trait. Cato was always the best, so he had a right to be cocky."

Tarrius was silent after that, and the only sound was the echo of his footsteps throughout the empty halls of the battle barge. Telion shifted and spoke up. "What say you, lad? I'm telling you this for your opinion, you know."

"**Aye, Scoutmaster, I know," **Tarrius replied. **"I'm just thinking of what we're about to do. How do you want to go about it?"**

Telion shrugged. "We'll play it by ear, lad. Just keep walking."

"**Aye, Scoutmaster."**

(' ')

Dimitri led the procession alongside Leonid, navigating his way past mines that lined the Eternity Walk. The explosives were cloaked by small camo-shrouds and blended in near-perfectly with the marble steps, noticeable only by the green 'deactivated' runes on their smooth surfaces. When the Dogs had passed, they would be reactivated and prepared for any coming attack.

Behind them, the Dogs moved in ordered columns, making their way up the stairs with care. Manker kept them in time as they marched, calling out a clear cadence over the troop frequency.

As they neared the top, Dimitri turned to Leonid. "Where are your brothers? I didn't see anyone down in the monastery."

Leonid gave him a grim smile. "That's because they are all up here, stationed around the mausoleum."

Dimitri frowned. "How? Are there that few left?"

"See for yourself," Leonid said, gesturing ahead.

Dimitri looked up, past the last dozen or so steps, to where a phalanx of Ultramarines were standing. Each was helmed, and each held a bolter pointed squarely at Dimitri's chest. His visor tagged a total of thirty Astartes; all that constituted the loyalist forces on Ultramar.

"Throne," Dimitri muttered, "is Sicarius really that charismatic, to have dragged more than ninety percent of the Ultramarines with him into heresy?"

"You have no idea," Leonid replied. He held his hands up and faced the Ultramarines. "Brothers, these are friends! The Battle Saint's Dogs have come to Macragge!"

"Lower your weapons!" belted a voice.

A symphony of clacks rang out over the mountaintop as the Ultramarines snapped their bolters onto their thighs. Soundlessly, they parted at the middle, allowing a new figure to step into view. Flanked to his left by Chief Librarian Tigurius and to his right by High Chaplain Cassius, the Master of the Ultramarines stepped down the flight of stairs.

Calgar was massive, a full two heads higher than Dimitri, and as he drew nearer, the hum of the active Armor of Antilochus vibrated the Equerry's teeth.

"I am Marneus Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines," he said. "I welcome you to Macragge. I have heard of you Dogs of War, and your valor impresses me. What little we have here, we share with you."

Dimitri made a small choking noise that sounded akin to a rabbit dying in a drainage pipe.

His second attempt at speech was more successful.

"I am Dimitri Vlasna, Equerry to the Battle Saint," he said. "Or was, at least. I'm afraid he died in combat."

"Ah, I see." Calgar looked to his Librarian. "Tigurius, would you take a look at the Saint and give us your prognosis?"

"Yes, lord." Tigurius's voice was a hollow whisper, and as he passed Dimitri, he spoke again. "Excuse me, Equerry."

His eyes were cold and black as the void and seemed to look through Dimitri to some infinite spot visible only to him. It was unnerving. Dimitri stepped aside.

The Librarian made his way to the casket and nodded to the Dogs holding it. Without protest, the soldiers lowered the makeshift coffin to the ground and stepped away. Tigurius lowered himself alongside the box and placed a hand on it. After a moment, he stood and let the pallbearers retake their positions.

"He is dead," Tigurius stated, "but not permanently. We should place him in the mausoleum until he can return from his communion."

Dimitri set his hand on the Chief Librarian's shoulder. Master psyker or not, no one who knew more about Jax than he did was walking away without explaining himself.

"What do you mean 'communion'?" he asked. "Communion with whom?"

Tigurius pushed his hand away. "The God-Emperor."

Dimitri nodded. If he had called himself surprised, he would have been lying.

As Tigurius walked away, Calgar again favored Dimitri with his smile. For such a renowned warrior, he seemed like quite a personable fellow.

"Now then, Equerry, should we take this meeting inside? I feel that this would be a bad place to be when Sicarius begins bombardment of our fortress shield."

Calgar walked away, and Dimitri scrambled after him. "What was that about a, um, bombardment?"

"Oh yes, he'll most certainly begin a bombardment in a few hours." Calgar nodded to himself. "Otherwise, he'll never get his Thunderhawks into our perimeter."

Behind Dimitri, Menshaw nudged Sternev. "'Bout gakking figures he'd get us in a place where we'd get shelled from space." He spat on one of the dud mines. "I bloody hate this piece of shit outfit."

(' ')

As _Caesar _made its way across Macragge's orbit toward the northern mountains of the primary continent, Cato Sicarius held a conference with his captains. Though the self-declared Chapter Master had taken virtually the entire Chapter with him during the coup, he lacked the support of most any captains.

Most of the officer cadre had stayed with Calgar, including the captains of the First, Fourth, Six, Seventh, and Ninth Companies. Thus, Sicarius was forced to promote many sergeants in their stead, so his war council could be looked upon by many as a room of novices.

Thankfully, he could at least be seen as the veteran of the bunch.

"Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Companies will land in the monastery proper," he explained over the picters that linked his tactica with the other captains'. "First, Third, and Ninth will land on the southern slopes and move the armor up Razorback pass to secure the auxillary landing pads. Concentrate on securing the auxiliary power generators. If we can disengage those, then Calgar will be without any automated anti-ship turrets to bring to bear on our orbital fleet."

"What of us?" asked Captain Gerrard of the Eighth. "Will we do nothing?"

Gerrard was one of the few original captains to defect, along with Garrius of the Tenth. Both were in command of heavily wounded companies, and, at the present, lacked Sicarius's full trust.

"You will be held in reserve," he replied. "Keep yourselves out of Calgar's gun range. Throne knows the old man will try to take a shot at anything that comes close."

"How will we deal with that?" asked Tonski, one of the newly promoted captains.

"Long-range bombardment." Sicarius highlighted three sections on the energy shield that covered the northern mountains. "If we can hit these from range using the planet's gravity well as an accelerator, we can force the fortress's generators to devote more power to keeping the shield online. When they can no longer sustain the anti-ship turrets' thirst, we will attack in tandem."

"And where will you attack, lord?" Tonski pressed.

Sicarius grinned. "Here," he said, "at the White Mausoleum. My Second Company will drop in from the skies, punch through the shield, and deliver the Emperor's justice to these cowards. We will deny them the privilege of fighting in the presence of the enshrined Primarch, and by routing them, we will earn Guilliman's absolute approval."

Over the ship-to-ship vox, Sicarius's captains hailed his courage with a round of applause. It was an honor that he accepted with false modesty, gently refusing their praise with a shake of his head and a thin smile.

"No, no, I'm not the brave one," he said. "We never would have made it this far without your belief in my vision of Calgar's weakness."

"He is old!" shouted one of the captains. "He let that false saint insult us! To hell with him!"

The vox exploded into another round of cheers, and this time, Sicarius didn't try to quell them.

(' ')

The Dogs laid Jax's casket at the base of the doors to the inner sanctum of the Mausoleum. Calgar turned to Dimitri as a group of Ultramarine serfs moved to take up the position of the pallbearers.

"I'm sorry, Equerry, but Ultramarine doctrine allows none but Chapter servants to move beyond these doors. These serfs will have to move the Battle Saint the rest of the way."

"To where, exactly?" Dimitri asked.

"To the final resting place of our genefather, Robute Gulliman," Calgar answered. "Now, come with me. We have much to discuss. Librarian Tigurius will stay with your Battle Saint to oversee his resurrection."

Dimitri followed Calgar into an adjacent chamber, leaving the rest of the Dogs behind with two exceptions. "Manker, Castarius, come with me."

The chamber was of decent size, but quickly became cramped with a hololithic table and six men in power armor. Calgar stood on one side with Uriel Ventris and Cassius, while Dimitri and company took up the other.

"I'll explain this as efficiently as possible," Calgar started. "After your encounter with Cato at Kletharka, he—"

"Got angry and staged a coup because you wouldn't launch a crusade against us," Dimitri finished. As Calgar's smile faded, he double-backed and made his words sound less heretical. "We found a serf belonging to a Sergeant Thanus. Tertius is his name."

Calgar nodded. "I see. Is this serf still with you?"

"Yes, Chapter Master. He is outside with our Navigator."

"Uriel, see that Brother Thanus is informed of this," Calgar said. Ventris nodded and donned his helmet, speaking into the vox. Calgar looked back to Dimitri, his smile returning. "Now that we have that out of the way, let us talk sieges. If I know Cato, he will stop at nothing to take this mountain, and I believe I know exactly how he will do it."

At his command, a layout of the fortress monastery, the White Mausoleum, and the surrounding mountains appeared on the hololithic. "At this point, we have scarcely enough troops to defend this position totally, so we will forget about defending the monastery itself altogether. Holding it would be tactical suicide with this many men, and with your saint on an imminent course for resurrection, we must hold them here."

Calgar highlighted three locations. "But Cato doesn't know that, and even if he did, he's too stubborn to break Codex tactics. He will land troops at all of these locations, including the monastery and Razorback Pass, below the shield's protection. Both of those areas have been mined from here to hell and back, and though that won't be enough to kill the bastard, it will slow him down some, which leaves us with his Second Company."

The Chapter Master pointed specifically at the Mausoleum. "Cato's lads are a determined lot, maybe better than First, and at least twice as arrogant. They will drop here, right on our heads, and ignore any defensive plan we can conjure. This will be the crucial fight, here at the Mausoleum. Everything before—all the long-range bombardments and reactor strikes and mines—matters as much as the cloud cover. But here, we will be on even terms. No armor, no heavy support, just us and them."

He looked at Dimitri. "Equerry, I defended your Battle Saint's actions at Kletharka as cutting-edge and decisive and condemned Sicarius's as foolish. I sided with you then, causing this mess. No matter what happens here, my Chapter will be forever changed by that decision. Did I make the right judgment?"

"Yes," Dimitri replied.

"Then will you stand with me and face this heresy?"

"Yes, Chapter Master." Dimitri held out his hand. "We will stand with you."

Their gloves touched just as the mountain around them rocked. Outside, the first of the bombardment ordinance had met the defense shield. The Siege of the White Mausoleum had begun.

(' ')

After a full twelve hours of nonstop fighting in Macragge City, the Dogs' ammunition reserves were running desperately low. Thankfully, in light of the lack of enough loyalist Astartes present at the White Mausoleum to utilize the equipment, Chapter Master Calgar had opened the Ultramarine armory to the visiting warriors. Dimitri, through Manker, had given the Dogs clear orders: take what you want, and be ready for a fight.

And Menshaw had done just that. He stood back from his welding station a changed man, with two lightning claws attached to his forearms. He caught a look at himself in a mirror and squeezed his grips, snapping the blades out with a synchronized metallic _snikt!_

"Those look preposterous on you," Manker observed from where he sat going over a bolter.

Menshaw looked again. Extended, the blades came down to near his ankles, and the matter disruptive energy crackling along them sparked across the floor. Yes, they did look preposterous, but he would be damned if this style-less Kriegan was going to make fun of him.

"You wanna go?" he asked, holding the claws up.

Manker looked down at him, his face an emotionless slab, cigar hanging from his mouth. "Was that a serious question?"

Menshaw frowned. "Sternev! Sternev, come tell this gakface that I look good!"

"Ah," Manker muttered, turning back to his bolter, "calling Sternev again. Always a convincing argument."

Menshaw ignored him; he would have none of this crap. "Sternev, damnit, where are you!"

"Here, Chief!"

The other Ratdog stumbled out from a rack of bolters and saluted, the motion rocking the assault cannons mounted atop his stocky shoulders. Bolters were mounted under his arms, and, along with the assault cannons, fed from ammunition containers mounted on his back. Wires connected the whole mess to his visor, and even from this distance, Menshaw could see his comrade's HUD going insane with all the targeting data.

"Oh, the claws look great, Chief. Just dandy."

"What's with all the guns?"

Sternev looked down at himself. "Well, you told me to go for range."

"You look like a gakking gun market!" Menshaw exclaimed. "Can you even walk like that?"

"Yes, actually." The words came from Castarius, who chose that moment to stride up from the depths of the armory. He grabbed Sternev with a servo arm to steady him as he went to work, securing the weaponry and feeders with an expert eye. "I designed your armor to maximize on the CMC platform's stability. With the added support of a lower weight center, Sternev could walk and shoot, if he so chose."

"Really?" Menshaw asked.

"Really," Castarius confirmed.

Sternev was grinning from ear to ear. "Hear that, Chief? I'm like a tiny Terminator!"

"Yeah, yeah," Menshaw said. "Just stick to the plan and cover my ass. Throne knows we'll be in the thick of it soon."

Sternev nodded and ran off, his weapons clunking as he went. When he was gone, Manker stood to follow him, but didn't leave without one last dig.

"Claws still look preposterous."

"Ah, balls to you."

(' ')

"Brother! Brother, could you help us with this?"

Tarrius turned on his waist servos to face the speaker, an Ultramarine standing next to an explosives crate twice his size.

"**Me?"** he asked.

The Astartes laughed. "No, brother, the other Dreadnaught."

Tarrius hesitated. If he helped in the loading, he ran the risk of revealing Telion where the Scoutmaster had hidden himself in Tarrius's back. Then again, were he to not help, he would look suspicious, and in these dark times, paranoia was high.

He was still hesitating when his former mentor solved the problem for him.

"Go ahead, lad," said Telion. "I'm concealed. Load it, and get us into a pod."

At once, Tarrius stepped forward and swiped the crate up with his claw, the quickness of the movement forcing the Astartes to throw himself aside.

"I appreciate the assistance, brother."

"**I serve where I can,"** Tarrius replied, walking away on his piston-like legs.

A moment later, Sicarius entered the loading deck with his cadre of honor guards, spouting orders as he marched. "Brothers, we strike in twenty minutes! Ready yourselves, for this will be the climax of our revolution! Out with the old!"

"In with the new!" the entire deck roared as one.

Telion watched, shaking his head. "Ignorant fools. Does Sicarius truly think himself right?"

"**He does, Scoutmaster."** Tarrius sat the crate down in a Thunderhawk's loading bay and strode to the nearest assault pod. **"Therein lies the most frightening question posed by this crisis: What will happen if he is victorious?"**

"Just load us, Tarrius," Telion replied. "The sooner we launch, the sooner I can forget that thought."

"**Yes, Scoutmaster."**

(' ')

As the bombardment continued late into the night, Dimitri found himself standing on the footstep of the Mausoleum, staring up into the night sky. This high in the mountains, the view was unhindered by cloud cover, and was only broken by the intermittent splash of orbital ordinance crashing against the energy shield. Each impact lit the area with a green glow, and displayed the world around him in sudden daylight.

During one of the impacts, Dimitri spied a figure moving towards him from the interior of the fortifications. Respectfully, he saluted the approaching Astartes.

"Lord Calgar," he greeted.

"Vlasna," Calgar replied, standing next to him. "Tigurius gave me a message to relay to you. Your Battle Saint's soul is stable. Chaos, it seems, cannot take him, even in their domain. His soul is in the warp, but it is yet protected."

Dimitri looked at him. "The Emperor?"

Calgar nodded, slowly. "That said, even with the Emperor at his side, he may not return to life. Such a feat is complicated, especially with a body as damaged as his."

"Can you give him treatment?" Dimitri asked. "Repair his body?"

"I'm afraid not. Doing so would be false and an affront to the God-Emperor. What he needs now is a miracle."

Dimitri grimaced. "Well, we're a tad short on those at the present, lord."

"So I noticed," Calgar replied. "Which brings me to my next point: Strategy."

"I defer to you on this, lord," Dimitri said. "I'm far from an expert."

"I wouldn't expect you to be." Calgar pointed at each position in turn. "I'll deploy my men at the heart of the courtyard, just at the top of the steps. Your men will stay outside of that, skirting the edges of the area. When Sicarius and his men hit my brothers from above, he will be drawn into a killzone, and your Dogs will have a clear field of fire to drive the rest of them down the stairs to their allies at the Fortress."

"And right into the mines," Dimitri finished.

"Exactly. How is that?"

Dimitri cocked his head to the side. "Very Codex: Astartes, lord."

"You've read the Codex?"

"Yes lord, every page of it."

Calgar may have been smiling, but Dimitri couldn't tell. The shelling had stopped for the moment and with no light to see with, Dimitri assumed that he could have been scowling just as easily.

"I knew I was right about you Dogs of War," he finally muttered.

"How's that, lord?"

"You are honorable men." Calgar held out his hand. "It will be a pleasure to die fighting alongside you, Vlasna."

Dimitri shook his hand. "Hopefully it won't come to that."

"It will for me," Calgar replied.

"How do you mean, lord?" Dimitri asked.

"I can feel it, Vlasna. These are my last hours. No matter what happens to the chapter or to this planet, I will die at first light." Calgar looked up into the sky again, just as the energy above flickered out. In the brief light, Dimitri could see the Chapter Master's face was calm.

"The shield has died," Calgar said. "We must prepare. Good luck, Equerry Vlasna."

"Likewise, lord," Dimitri replied.

Just then, Menshaw and Sternev walked past for their patrol route. Both Dimitri and Calgar watched them pass, but it was the Marathon-born who spoke up.

"You look ridiculous," he said.

Menshaw sighed. "Everyone's a critic."

"I'm not, Chief!"

"Play with your cannons, Sternev."

Above, the bombardment began to lose its thunder, heralding the end of the first phase of the attack. At any moment, the traitors' attack would commence.

**Author's Note: So that was kind of an action-dry chapter, but it set the stage for what's to come. Next chapter will be huge, with the siege of the White Mausoleum taking up almost the entire thing, so stay tuned.**

**Or check your e-mail. Whatever.**

**Anyway, that's it for me. Later.**

***Review notice. Please review. That is all.  
**


	38. Chapter 38: Civil War: Storm's Descent

Sicarius's fleet launched their payloads exactly as he had specified, with Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Companies making a drop pod assault on the Fortress of Hera itself, while First, Third, and Ninth landed with their Thunderhawks on Razorback Pass to the south of the Fortress complex to move their armor up to the generator complex. Sicarius himself led his own Second Company directly into the heart of the loyalists, his drop pods spearing from the battle barge _Caesar _directly through the weakened energy shield and into the White Mausoleum's marble courtyard.

Unknown to Sicarius, there were no loyalists in the Fortress itself, nor were there any defending the generators, and with the Eternity Walk mined, none of his misplaced forces would be able to reinforce his speartip assault. Two companies, the Eighth and Tenth under Gerrard and Garrius respectively, were not engaged at all. Sicarius would not call on their aid as both captains were promoted during Calgar's reign, and therefore were not trustworthy.

This meant that for much of the battle, Sicarius's Second Company was cut off completely from the rest of the revolutionary force, and outnumbered in the open ground. However, much of Second Company went into battle clad in Terminator warplate, balancing the forces and negating any superior position the defenders possessed.

The firefight outside the White Mausoleum lasted less than five minutes, but it would be the bloodiest of the entire Siege.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 38: Civil War: Part 4: Storm's Descent_

Dimitri heard the retros flaring and looked up in time to see the drop pods screaming in from orbit. They tore through the weakened shield and hammered down into the courtyard, the absorber rockets blasting chunks of marble across the area. Ramps dropped and the traitors poured out, tearing into the loyalists at the heart of the courtyard.

Calgar's plan had worked; the traitors took the bait, but now the bait was paying for it. As Dimitri watched, two loyalists were crushed against the ground, their armor crumpled at the hand of a thunder hammer-wielding titan.

"Throne of Terra," he muttered, swapping frequencies. "Terminators! They've got Terminators! All units, focus targets and open fire! Open fire!"

From positions concealed in the rocks of the mountainsides around the courtyard, the Dogs opened fire, pouring a hodgepodge of bolts and spikes into the killzone. From where Dimitri stood at the front of the Mausoleum itself, he could see the effects instantly: two Terminators dropped before they could respond, their heavy bodies riddled with rockets and hypersonic spikes.

Dimitri opened fire seconds later, joined by Uriel Ventris to his left and Marneus Calgar to his right. Further down the line, Animal Mother let loose with a heavy bolter, tearing into the lighter armored traitors at the peripheral lines.

"Solid hits!" Dimitri shouted. "Solid hits! Keep it up!"

As long as the bait kept the traitors busy and split between targets, this would be a simple matter…

(' ')

Cato Sicarius spun, avoiding a chainsword swipe, and sliced the attacker in half. The loyalist fell apart, his redundant organs spilling out across the bloodied marble, and Sicarius moved on, forcing himself to ignore the fallen Astartes's name rune. He had killed too many friends already.

"Terminators, focus on the snipers!" he bellowed. "Everyone else, purge our immediate vicinity! Do it now!"

The Terminators replied instantly, hosing the suppressing positions with streams of explosive shells from their assault cannons. Rock and steel exploded as the torrent of fire reshaped the mountain faces as they scythed down the snipers, destroying everything around the courtyard. The Dogs, impressive as they were, hunkered down to avoid the incoming, allowing Sicarius's men a degree of freedom with which to finish off the immediate threats.

Calgar had left them bait. How typical of the old man.

"Calgar!" Sicarius roared, pushing towards the front of the Mausoleum, where he knew the Chapter Master would be. "Fight me!"

(' ')

Tarrius and Telion emerged from their drop pod side-by-side amid the chaos. The Scoutmaster ducked down, avoiding the ordinance that filled the air, and trying to keep clear of the smoke screen that was limiting his visibility. Tarrius did not have the same problem, and with his new body's auspex, saw everything in shades of thermal.

"Where is he, lad? I can't see a bloody thing in this smoke."

"**There," **Tarrius said, **"making his way for the front of the Mausoleum, straight for the Chapter Master. Should I target him?"**

"No, lad, no," Telion replied. "You focus on the rest of these bastards. I'll take Sicarius."

"**Yes, Scoutmaster." **Tarrius began to turn away, his power claw flexing. **"Go with the Emperor."**

Telion did not reply and made his way into the thick of it, dodging in and out of the melee around him. Bolters rang in his ear, and he was deaf before he was halfway to Sicarius, but he kept going, searching the battlefield with his other senses: the ruined ozone smell of an active power sword, the recent chipped ground signifying a pitched run, and his instincts.

He emerged from the smoke a moment later, with Sicarius plain as day in front of him. The traitorous captain's back was turned, and beyond him, Telion could see Calgar rushing forward, his power fists held high.

Dropping to one knee, the Scoutmaster drew down on Sicarius, aiming for the back of his head.

(' ')

Manker was losing men. In the opening salvo concentrated on his positions, over fifty Dogs had been killed. It was the largest loss of life per second he had ever seen before, and even as he continued to fire, Manker realized that it had to end. This was all the plan allowed for. After this, they had to retreat into the Mausoleum proper.

"Vlasna, we can't hold them," he shouted over the comm. "Casualties are heavy. Recommend we pull back to secondary positions."

In the time between his call and Dimitri's response, Manker sighted in on an old scout aiming at Calgar and squeezed off the last spike in his magazine.

(' ')

The spike caught Telion at a downward angle, catching him in the left shoulder and evacuating his joint out of an exit hole where his shoulder blade had been a millisecond before. The legendary Scoutmaster hit the courtyard with an un-ceremonial thud that went unheard by the surrounding battle, grunting in pain as his bolter clattered across the marble.

(' ')

Dimitri dropped back and reloaded as he spoke. "Copy that, Manker. Pull back now." He swapped frequencies. "Chapter Master, we are retreating!"

(' ')

Calgar deflected Sicarius's attack with the back of his fist and replied with a burst from his gauntlet-mounted storm bolters. The Captain of the Second twisted, avoiding both streams, and came at him again with a downward swipe. Calgar evaded barely, the tip of Sicarius's sword cutting a gouge down the front of the Armor of Antilochus.

Damn, but he was fast. If he was fast enough to stand up to Calgar, however, had yet to be decided.

Calgar forced him away with a punch to the chest, using the brief reprieve to reply to Dimitri. "Go, Equerry. I must stay. There is a fight to be won."

"Understood, Chapter Master," replied the boy. "Go with Him."

Sicarius steadied himself and looked across at Calgar. The Chapter Master stared back. Around them, the battle seemed to fade away, the sounds of the advancing traitors and the retreating loyalists all but a whisper.

Sicarius did not smile. "You and I have unfinished business."

"Boy," Calgar replied, "you are finally right about something."

(' ')

Tarrius watched the fight between Sicarius and Calgar, all thirty-two seconds of it, and recorded every second of it with his picters. For the rest of his life he would watch the record of those few moments, and forever on until the end of his existence, he would curse his inaction.

They met midway between each other, hitting and backing away in unison. They did this twice more, power sword meeting power fists in lightning-quick strikes, before bouncing back on their heels to range. Both opened fire, Sicarius with his boltgun and Calgar with his storm bolters. Sicarius dodged the shots, while Calgar let his armor soak up the damage, before they each lunged again.

Calgar reached out, his movements economical in his heavy armor, but ultimately not enough. Sicarius dodged his thrusts and swept his blade up from the side as he passed.

Blood sprayed, and Tarrius screamed inside his liquid tomb as Marneus Calgar fell to the ground, just as the first light of dawn peeked above the mountains.

(' ')

Deep within the White Mausoleum's interior, Tigurius looked up from where he crouched over the body of the Battle Saint, his face a grim mask.

"Goodbye, my friend," he muttered.

(' ')

Dimitri stormed into the Mausoleum's outer chamber, holding his Impaler in one hand and supporting a wounded Dog with the other. "Close the doors!" he shouted. "Close the damn doors or they'll follow us!"

The few remaining Dogs and Ultramarine loyalists themselves against the multi-ton marble doors, moving them slowly toward each other.

As Dimitri watched, a Dreadnaught powered in from the courtyard, its blue form splattered with blood. The walker was trailed by streams of traitor bolts, and as it entered, it turned to help close the entrance, using its massive power claw to force one door shut, then the other.

In the muted atmosphere that followed, the resurrected warrior spoke. **"The White Mausoleum is secure."**

"Um, alright." Dimitri sat the Dog down on the floor and signaled a loyalist Apothecary. "Who are you?"

"**Brother Tarrius, Fourth Company Dreadnaught."**

Captain Ventris pulled off his helmet and pointed at the Dreadnaught. "You defected, Tarrius! Why are you here?"

The Dreadnaught lowered itself in shame. **"Honored Captain, my defection was false. I had hoped to end Sicarius's coup myself, but I… failed."**

"Let it go, Uriel," spoke a new voice.

Tarrius lowered the speaker to the ground, letting the old scout stand on his own. Dimitri recognized him as Scoutmaster Telion.

"We haven't the time for this bickering," continued the Scoutmaster. "Now are you going to coordinate this last stand, or do I need to change your greaves for you like some neophyte fresh out of his armor honors?"

Ventris frowned, but the anger was gone from his face. "I will, Scoutmaster. Take up a position and have someone see to that arm."

Telion shrugged. "I've had worse, but a word to whichever one of you Dogs shot me: friendly fire or not, when this is over, you and I shall settle this matter."

"Duly noted," Manker said. "It would be an honor."

As Telion walked away, Dimitri turned to the Kriegan. "Really? You shot Torias Telion?"

"Yes," Manker replied. After a moment, he added, "Not on purpose."

Dimitri shook his head. "You are a piece of work, Manker."

"Thank you, Equerry."

(' ')

Marneus Calgar's eyes stared into the morning sky, blanked over like the gaze of a dead fish. Cato Sicarius stood above him, looking down at his deceased mentor, his face a grimace.

"Too bad," he muttered. "You could have been a real asset to the new chapter."

"Hail, Captain Sicarius!" sounded Brother Nochius as he strode up, the heavy steps of his Terminator warplate reverberating the bloody ground.

Shaken from his thoughts, Sicarius returned the greeting. "Hail, Terminator-Captain. How are your men?"

"They are well," replied Nochius, "and ready to storm the Mausoleum, with your permission."

The twenty-foot doors to the White Mausoleum were closed, providing two adamantium-reinforced marble obstacles to Sicarius's conquest. Nochius's Terminators were gathering on the Mausoleum's stoop, their thunder hammers crackling, ready to breach the doors.

"How long will it take?" Sicarius asked.

"Ten minutes, at least," Nochius replied. "Shall we begin?"

Sicarius nodded. "Have at them, Terminator-Captain. I want Ventris's head."

"Then you shall have it." Nochius turned his attention to his Terminator brothers. "Men! Tear down the doors!"

"Aye!" one of the Astartes replied, hefting his hammer.

The head came down against the doors, resonating with a boom true to its name and sending a crack through the marble façade. Six more followed it, and the stone began to slough away, revealing the adamantium beneath in the bright light of morning.

(' ')

The chamber shook as the Terminators began their assault, the inhabitants crouching within preparing themselves for the coming fight.

A last stand, Dimitri realized. That's what this was. Whatever happened next, no matter how many traitors they downed, the outcome of this was certain. Jax had yet to return, and without him their fates were sealed. He would die here.

"Animal Mother," he said, "come here."

The Catachan moved closer, holding his heavy bolter in one hand, and popped his visor. Their eyes locked, and Dimitri knew Animal had no illusions clouding his mind. He, too, knew the end was near.

"Yeah?" he asked.

Dimitri lowered his voice. "Look, stay near Yevina and all, but when the time comes—"

"I got it." Animal tapped the flak pistol locked to his thigh. "When it comes down to it, I'll make sure they don't take her."

Dimitri nodded. "Thank you, Casey."

Just as they finished, Captain Ventris strode to the center of the chamber and cleared his throat.

"Sicarius and his men are coming in for their final attack, and it sounds like they're leading with Terminators. No matter how he plays it, the next strike will finish us off, unless we come together perfectly as a single force. So for now, we are not Dogs of War and Ultramarines. We are not different. Today, for all it's worth, we all stand united as brothers, bonded in the furnace of war. Today, we are all sons of Guilliman."

No one spoke for a long moment, until Menshaw broke the silence.

"Well, color my arse inspired," he said. "We following him now, boss man?"

Dimitri nodded. "With Calgar gone, Ventris has overall command. Where do you want us, Chapter Master?"

Ventris smiled grimly. "That's what I've been contemplating, and I think I have an idea, but I'll need Tigurius's help."

(' ')

Terminator-Captain Nochius landed the final blow, the head of his thunder hammer delivering the breaking strike to the Mausoleum doors. The slabs fell in and shattered the tiled floor.

"Onward!" Nochius shouted. "Out with the old, in with the new!"

He led his Terminators in, their heavy armored footsteps resonating booming echoes throughout the chamber. As they advanced, Nochius scanned for targets, finding none with his auspex.

"What is this?" he asked.

"No targets, brother-captain," sounded one of his men.

"None here, either," reported another.

Nochius frowned. "There are no targets. They've retreated, the cowards."

"No," said a voice, "but you will!"

A figure dropped from the gantries and landed in the middle of the Terminators' grouping, one of the Dogs of War's mutant soldiers, a ratling. He was only as high as Nochius's knee-guard, and his rotund appearance made the Terminator-Captain laugh aloud.

His laugh soon became a shout of surprise and hate as Menshaw dug one of his lightning claws into Nochius's thighs.

Menshaw sank his second claw into the Terminator's stomach, and began to climb up the towering Astartes, licks of blue flame and blood erupting from his handholds.

"Funny guy, eh?" he asked, leveling his face with the Terminator's dog-faced helm. "Well, I got a joke for you."

Nochius thrust his head forward, right for Menshaw's face. The ratling swung to the side, pivoting on the claw he'd imbedded in the Terminator's shoulder, and landed on the Astartes's back, planting his free claw into the warrior's shoulder blade.

"Six Terminators walk into the Mausoleum of a demigod and get slaughtered like the ignorant gakkers they are."

Nochius screamed as four lightning claws broke through the base of his skull and pushed out of his forehead, fountaining his charred brain matter into the air amid a spray of sparks.

Menshaw rode the falling body into the ground and pulled his claws free. Looking around at the shocked Terminators, he held his bloody claws at his sides and asked, "Who wants it next?"

The Terminators raised their storm shields and cocked back their thunder hammers, ready for a quick, messy kill. What they failed to expect was the Dreadnaught walking up from the darkness behind them.

"**I am Tarrius the Eternal, and I condemn you as traitors to the Chapter and to the Imperium of Man as a whole. I bring you death."**

On the walker's shoulder, Sternev's plethora of weapons cycled into readiness, and behind him, the rest of the Dogs and loyalists emerged from the darkness cast down by Tigurius's psyker powers.

Dimitri stood in front of the rest, his Impaler held level with the Terminators. "Yeah, what he said."

(' ')

The shooting stopped after a few minutes, and Sicarius tried the vox again. "Nochius? What's going on in there?"

The Terminator-Captain appeared from within, his corpse tossed three hundred feet to land at Sicarius's feet, blood running from rents in his blue warplate. Sicarius frowned down at the corpse before calling out to the men in the Mausoleum.

"Do you think this impresses me? Do you think I am in any way dissuaded?" he shouted. "What can you do now? You cannot touch me!"

A bolter shot rang out, and the side of Sicarius's head exploded in a plume of blood. The Captain stumbled away, avoiding the next shot that took off a Sergeant's head, and took cover behind a drop pod.

He touched his temple and looked at the crimson stain on his glove in disgust, feeling the blood rush to his brain. His armor injected a cocktail of stimulants into his veins, and suddenly, all Cato Sicarius wanted was blood.

"All Astartes, charge! Take the White Mausoleum!" Sicarius swung out from cover and held his sword in line with the enemy. "Kill them all!"

(' ')

"Oh balls," Dimitri muttered. "They're charging."

Next to him, Uriel Ventris readied his bolter. "That's perfect."

"Perfect? Why is that perfect?" Dimitri frowned. "What are you going to do?"

Ventris smiled at him. "Exactly what they least expect, my dear Vlasna." He lifted his power sword to the sky. "Brothers: the enemy is upon us! Meet them halfway! Do not let one traitor set foot within this Mausoleum! For Calgar! For the Emperor!"

**Author's Note: Turns out this battle takes longer than I thought, so the conclusion will be next chapter. I would have finished it here, but I felt like I was running dry on what Mr. Abnett refers to as 'rocket fuel', meaning I need to go read a hell of a lot of books before doing any more writing.**

**So the rest of my weekend will be a 40k fest, as I need to read _The First Heretic_ ASAP, and then sink my teeth into at least the first two _Eisenhorn_ novels before Monday night, and then I'm going to hop back on this and write nonstop until next Saturday. Hopefully, I'll be able to hammer out the end of this arc and get about halfway into the next before then, so that I'll have some slack time to catch up on other projects. **

**Namely, _StarCraft: Brain Dead_ and _Green is Best_.**

**So, until then, adieu.**

***Read. Review. Repeat.  
**


	39. Chapter 39: Civil War: Stormbreak

_He wakes up in a battlefield. There's scrap metal lying everywhere, and fires burning in the flame-blackened hulks of vehicles. The battlefield stretches in all directions, the smoke of countless centuries of combat palling above the beaten ground, never to disperse. Bodies, their exact shapes unclear, as if viewed through thickly fogged glass, cover the land as far as the warzone._

_He stands naked in the middle of it all. He is untouched by the blood and death that surrounds him; he can't even smell it. Opposite him stands a golden figure, its features obscured but its presence unmistakable: it is the God-Emperor of Mankind. He knows this as surely as he knows his own name—as surely as he has ever known anything._

"_Sir," he says. There is nothing else to say._

_The Emperor's voice is surprisingly low, as if he is not given to shouts, as if he thinks them unnecessary. Perhaps it is just that, being who he is, shouting is rarely needed. "My attention is required elsewhere, and therefore my time here is short, so listen carefully."_

"_Got it."_

"_You are not of the Shadow World."_

"_Yeah I am," he says. "You said so."_

"_Again, my words are misinterpreted. I sent you to Shadow World to become who you are today, untainted by the influence of our troubled galaxy. You needed to be this man who stands before me to peel back the coming darkness, and to save my Imperium from the horrors without, and the terrors within. You are, were, and always have been, my final son."_

"_Yes, sir."_

"_Do you understand?"_

"_Yes, sir. But I have a question."_

"_Speak it."_

"_Sir, I've killed a lot of things in my life, and I know you have, too. I just want you to tell me straight: is it worth it?"_

_Though his face is hidden in brilliant light, the Emperor's smile comes through in his words. "Yes, Jax, every single day."_

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 39: Civil War: Part 5: Stormbreak_

The loyalists and Dogs met the traitors at the midway point between the stoop of the White Mausoleum and the top step of the Eternity Walk in a clash of neo-steel and ceramite, a thunder of bolters and Impalers, and the sparking cacophony of chainblades biting into armor.

Dimitri bashed a traitor in the face with the hilt of his rifle, staggering the Astartes with the inhuman force of his punch long enough to finish the duel with a long burst of spikes. Blue armor turned red and the fallen Ultramarine toppled to the ground.

Another Astartes jumped the corpse and landed on a power sword, dying before he could get at Dimitri with his chainsword.

Uriel Ventris hurled the corpse aside, his weapon dislodging from the man's sternum with a wet _shlinkt_, and pushed Dimitri aside. "Go, Vlasna. Form up with your compatriots. Survive this fight."

"Yes, Brother-Captain."

As Dimitri fell back, Ventris engaged another traitor. Their blades met seven times in two seconds. Ventris ended the brief duel in the third, his boot kicking the other warrior's blade aside before digging the point of his sword into the traitor's throat.

He had no time for respite, though, as another was suddenly upon him. Instinctively, Ventris brought his blade up to block, and steel met steel in an explosion of blue fire. The other blade was a power sword, almost identical to his own.

Ventris looked into the eyes of his attacker. "Damn."

"Yes," smiled Cato Sicarius, "damn indeed."

(' ')

Menshaw ripped his claws free of the traitor's chest, letting steaming piles of innards spill from the wounds, and leapt from the cadaver at another opponent. Nearby, Tellion stood back-to-back with Manker, his stoic accuracy putting down target after target with pin-point head and chest shots from his specialized bolter.

"Good shooting." Manker tossed the comment offhandedly, never letting up in his constant stream of punishing spike fire.

"Likewise," Tellion replied. "You're a little sloppy, though."

"So they tell me."

"We aren't becoming friends," Tellion said.

Behind his facemask, a trace of a smile ghosted Manker's face. "I wouldn't dream it, sir."

Meters away, Tarrius waded through the traitors, vaporizing torsos with his multi-melta while his power claw worked those brave or ignorant enough to draw near him. One such traitor was scooped up and tossed over the Dreadnaught's shoulder.

Sternev, perched as he was atop Tarrius's shoulder, tracked the flailing traitor with his plethora of weapons. The over-armed ratling opened fire, destroying the traitor in mid-air and showering the ground with his blood.

"Hell yeah!" Sternev shouted. "Chief! Chief, you see that?"

Below, Menshaw was too busy burrowing into the chest of an enemy Astartes to respond, throwing churned organs skyward with every feral snarl he emitted.

"**Well, I saw it," **Tarrius boomed as he laid into a heavy weapons squad with his arm-mounted flamer. **"Personally, I found it impressive."**

Sternev grinned and locked on to the burning devastators. "Thanks, Tarrius. I appreciate that."

He opened fire, and the traitors below died screaming.

(' ')

Ventris and Sicarius fought at a speed unknowable to the unaided mortal eye, and that even the technologically advanced Dogs found difficult to perceive. They moved with a grace born of noble upbringings, though one was clearly more refined than the other. Ventris, and the cut in his shoulder weeping crimson, knew this all to well.

"You're slow," Sicarius taunted, dodging a thrust. He stepped into Ventris's guard and delivered an open-palmed strike to his sternum. "You fight like a drunk."

Ventris stumbled back, clumsily blocking Sicarius's next flurry of strikes, sword held with the one arm that hadn't lost all muscle control from shoulder to elbow. Another hit and he held his block steady afterward, leaving a split second window—a window that Sicarius used to batter Ventris's blade aside and drive his own home through the Captain of the Fourth's chest. The crackling power blade broke through Ventris's rib-plate and punched through his left lung, emerging from his back in a shower of sparks. His power pack exploded, and his fibre-muscles fell slack, powerless.

Pain exploded across Uriel Ventris's vision, his armor's inhibitors and a lifetime of conditioning doing little to deaden the sensation.

"I killed Calgar," Sicarius was saying. "He was twice the fighter you'll ever be. What did you think you could do to me, brother?"

Ventris spoke despite the pain, and did so with a laugh. "That," he said, pointing past the traitor leader.

Sicarius looked. His forces, the honored Second Company, were in full retreat. What was left of his chosen elite fled in the face of the loyalist counter-attack, running toward the Eternity Walk, chased by the bolts and spikes of the defending conglomerate.

"Damn," Sicarius muttered. He yanked his sword from Ventris's chest, trailing blood and electing a pained grunt from the fallen captain. "Well played. I won't kill you now."

As Sicarius walked away to join his retreating brothers, a pair of hands pulled Ventris to his feet.

"Don't shoot him," he said.

"Couldn't if I wanted to," Dimitri replied. "I'm out of spikes."

Ventris wobbled on his feet, but held himself upright. His punctured lung was shut down and sealed off already, and his third was making up for the reduced capacity. His armor, however, was restricting. Without his power pack, he had to fight simply to move his limbs.

Dimitri noticed it, and activated the command link. "Castarius, get over here with a lascutter."

"Aye, Equerry."

Ventris frowned. "We've only got minutes before Cato gets his reinforcements together. They will hit us again."

"I know."

"The mines won't even slow him down. You need to arrange your men in a battle line. Make barricades out of the—"

"Bodies of the fallen," Dimitri finished. "I know, I know. Now be quiet so we can cut you out of this armor."

(' ')

Sicarius sat on the steps, seething in quiet rage while an Apothecary tended to his bleeding temple. It took all of his considerable strength not to stand and lay into the sergeant who had ordered the retreat, and even then, the fingers of Sicarius's sword hand twitched.

"Get off of me," he snapped, pushing the Apothecary's arm aside. "I'll be fine."

"The cut is deep, Captain."

Sicarius frowned up at the man. "Ventris has a sword in his _chest_. If he can deal with that, then I think myself strong enough to deal with a flesh wound."

At that, the Apothecary left, grumbling something under his breath. Sicarius ignored him and pushed to his feet, donning his pock-marked helm.

Around him, the remains of his company established defenses below the lip of the stairs, the few heavy weapons that were left assembled in pillboxes carved out of the marble by explosives. For now, the loyalists wouldn't be able to assault him, giving him the time necessary to form a final strike force.

The traitorous captain clicked his vox live, linking to every senior helm in-theatre. "Sicarius to all rearward companies: assemble on the Eternity Walk. Resistance has proven more effective than originally thought."

A round of acknowledgements sounded, each promising fifteen minutes till arrival—an acceptable time, though longer than Sicarius would have liked. In that time, the loyalists would have their own defenses.

Sicarius spat on the stairs. Victory here would be costly.

(' ')

Lieutenant Harken Manker hauled a dead Astartes up the stoop of the Mausoleum by its leg before tossing the corpse on a pile of its fellows with the dull clang of ceramite on ceramite. Blood leaked from a hundred cuts in the body, but the armor would hold, and that's all he needed.

"Comrades, drag the dead to this position!" he sounded. "Make a wall of their bodies!"

The Dogs responded in silence, pulling the bodies of the traitors into place, while the Ultramarines gathered up bolters and ammunition, distributing it among the defenders. The Dreadnaught, Tarrius, worked on the derelict drop pods, stripping them for steel to further reinforce the makeshift wall that was slowly forming between the pillars that lined the stoop.

Nearby, Tellion loaded one of his magazines, sliding specialized bolts into place one at a time with calloused fingers. "Good plan," he said.

"Kriegan defensive doctrine," Manker replied.

The old Scoutmaster smiled. "I've served with Kriegans. Hardy bastards, the lot of you. Had no idea this unit was full of them."

Manker had no response to that, so he settled with a nod.

Meters away, Dimitri stood alongside Castarius as the Techmarine worked on Ventris. The captain's old armor was gone, discarded and assembled in places along the defense, allowing Castarius to machine Ventris into his new armor.

"What do you make of our odds?" Dimitri asked, not looking away from the men working along the stoop. In one place, Yevina Cardigan helped in the defense, hauling bodies as Animal Mother watched the area around her, ever the bodyguard. "I can hear their armor forming up along the walk. They'll hit us any minute."

Tigurius replied for Ventris, stepping from within the Mausoleum. "We will be victorious."

Dimitri grinned without humor. "How do you know, Librarian?"

"The hour of resurrection is upon us." Tigurius's face was unreadable in the shadows cast of his psyker hood. "Your Battle Saint's return will be soon."

"Can you be more specific?"

"No."

"Great." Dimitri turned to where Castarius was finishing up. "You ready, Brother-Captain?"

"Yes," Ventris said, flexing the fingers of the colossal power fists attached to his new Armor of Antilochus. He walked to the line, his heavy tread weightier than even that of Terminator warplate. "Brothers and cousins, take positions!"

(' ')

The Dogs of War threw themselves prone, an action the Astartes did not mirror. This on-the-ground defensive stance was born from each man's Guard heritage, and their cover was all the more effective for it.

The Ultramarines, on the other hand, stood in an odd half-crouch stance, their legs braced for continuous fire. Their blades—chainswords and power weapons all—hung maglocked to their thighs, quietly awaiting the moment they would sink into traitor flesh.

The command squad held fast at the center of the line, a rock around which the entire defense held fast. Dimitri stood alongside Calgar, watching the top of the Eternity Walk for the first signs of attack.

He didn't have to wait long, as the prow of the first Land Raider appeared seconds later.

Impalers and bolters propped on the broken bodies of the enemy, the loyalists roared their defiance in the tongue of gunfire.

(' ')

The Land Raider ignored the bolts and spikes assailing its steel flesh and barreled on, crunching across the destroyed courtyard on its massive treads. In its wake came two Predators, their cannons adding to the Land Raider's fury, and impacts sounded against the Mausoleum's marble façade, shaking white debris on the defenders.

A lascannon blast hammered the defenses near the command squad, vaporizing a clutch of Dogs and Astartes and showering Dimitri with molten armor.

"Ventris, we need to stop that armor!" he shouted.

The new Chapter Master didn't look away from the coming attack, firing with his wrist mounted bolters. "Indeed," he said. "Tarrius, with me!"

Ventris mounted the defenses and charged, his thundering stride only outmatched by that of the colossal Dreadnaught alongside him. Together, the warriors struck the Land Raider, their attack a demonstration of the brilliant coordination inherent between Guilliman's sons.

Tarrius vaporized the pintle gunner as he met the tank, slamming his power claw into the vehicle's prow just above the ground. Steel groaned against steel and Tarrius's robotic body groaned at the unbelieveable stress put upon it. The undead warrior roared and heaved with all his inhuman might, forcing the Land Raider's heavy front up onto his shoulder.

"**Now, brother!"**

Ventris ran between Tarrius's legs and drove a double-handed punch into the exposed underbelly of the great machine. The power fists' collision sounded with a thunderclap of force and blasted debris back for meters around. Ventris's hands breached the interior and he triggered his wrist bolters, filling the vehicle with a hail of careening, explosive bolts.

There was a moment of calm, and then the Land Raider detonated with the fury of a dying machine god, blinding all engaged units in the wake of its death scream.

As the flash cleared Dimitri's eyes, he made out the image of Tarrius moving on to one of the Predators, his multi-melta razing the vehicle's side. Nearby, Ventris walked back to the lines, pointing at the other remaining tank.

"Everyone, focus your fire! Destroy that vehicle!"

As the entire defense force did as ordered, and the Predator's skin began to warp under the sheer volume of the incoming fire, Dimitri heard Menshaw mutter next to him.

"Gakking crazy, these ones."

Dimitri didn't have the words to correct him. In truth, he wasn't convinced the little man was wrong.

(' ')

The Predator's barrel swung around on balanced gears, intent on repelling the walker bearing down on it.

"**No."** Tarrius grabbed the barrel with his power claw.

The end of the barrel erupted in flame, coughing a shell past Tarrius's hull and into the mountainside nearby, doing little more than jostling boulders free of their mounts. Tarrius bent the barrel back on itself and snapped it like a twig, before leveling his multi-melta with a rent in the tank's side.

"**You don't."**

His multi-melta fired with the intangible warble of ionized air, and the Predator exploded. Afterward, one of the crew stumbled from the wreck, disoriented and unhelmed. Before he could discern where he was, Tarrius crushed him underfoot, and moved back to the stoop.

(' ')

"Reload!" Manker shouted. "Be ready for the next assault!"

The Kriegan slapped a magazine into his Impaler, his HUD ticking off a full compliment of 500 spikes; his last magazine. After this he would be down to his flak pistol, chainsword, and whatever bolter he could find laying about the battlefield. The prospect was not a bright one.

"You'll be fine," Tellion said, adjusting his wounded shoulder along the wall. "I'll keep them off you."

"Still not friends?" Manker said, a smile coloring his words.

"Not a chance."

(' ')

Tarrius met Sternev back at the wall.

"That was bitchin'," the ratling said.

"**Yes."**

"You gakked them up!"

"**Yes."**

"Next time, I'm going with you."

"**No."**

(' ')

Dimitri nodded to Ventris as he crossed the wall. Mechanisms in his fists chunked as they reloaded his wrist bolters, and the Chapter Master frowned back at the wreckage.

"So, what's next?" Dimitri asked. "Infantry assault?"

"Yes," Ventris replied, listening to the approaching drone of thrusters over the snowcapped peaks. "But first comes the strike from above."

Dimitri's expression soured. "What, more drop pods?"

"No."

The drone became a roar, and thirty rebel Astartes landed amid the defenses, jump packs bleeding streams of fire.

(' ')

Tellion swept a traitor's legs out from under him, dropping him to the ground where he was shot in the face by a spike from Manker's Impaler. The weapon was kicked from Manker's grasp seconds later, the traitor responsible falling on him with a chainsword. Manker blocked wrist-to-hilt, stopping the whirring adamantine teeth mere inches from his visor. He held the traitor's attention long enough for Tellion to get behind him and break the bastard's neck.

"A good rescue," Manker said.

"Likewise," Tellion replied, hefting the dead Astartes's chainsword as his own.

Around the two warriors, the defensive line exploded in episodes of close-range violence, carried out by chainblades and combat knives and point-blank bolter explosions. Blood splashed the wall of cadavers as Dogs fell before the sudden attack. Soon, though, they were fighting back, their greater numbers crushing the comparatively small assaulting force.

But the damage, as both the Kriegan and Ultramarine knew, was already done. The rest of Sicarius's force was already moving across the courtyard in a dead charge, supported on the flanks by Rhino and Razorback transports laden with heavy weapons. This force moved free of any loyalist interference, these precious moments of freedom bought with the lives of their jump pack brothers.

By the time the loyalists brought their focus back to the ground assault, the enemy was already too close for it to matter. The defenders' lives now measured in seconds.

(' ')

Sicarius watched the charge from on high, secure in the belly of a Thunderhawk gunship and surrounded by an honor guard of veteran Astartes. His brother revolutionaries flooded the courtyard, reaching the wall on the heels of a sheet of bolter fire. The attackers smashed against the loyalists, their charge stalled on the wall.

That was acceptable. With all the defenders clustered there, Sicarius had no need to push farther. Calgar's useless resistance would end here, their own bodies added to the grotesque wall they cowered behind.

Something caught his attention, and Sicarius magnified one section of the line, where a giant in blue was beating Sicarius's forces aside with fists of crackling lightning.

No, it couldn't be. He had killed the old man. He knew it as surely as he had ever known anything.

"Ventris," he realized with a sneer. "Oh, well played, Uriel."

The leader of the coup stepped from the gunship, falling to the marble courtyard below, his power sword snapping to life. "Well played indeed."

Tigurius was the first to fall before Sicarius's wrath, his arm spinning away on a jet of blood seconds after the traitorous captain's landing. The librarian swung round with his stave, but not quickly enough. Sicarius blocked the thrust and knocked Tigurius unconscious with the pommel of his blade, having no time to even kill the psyker.

"Ventris!" he bellowed. "Let us finish this!"

The new Chapter Master pulled his fist from the chest of a traitor and turned to his former brother. "Yes," he growled, "let's."

And then the Mausoleum exploded.

(' ')

Dimitri railed against the attackers, fighting tooth-and-nail with everything he had. All his weapons were dry, their bolts jammed open, and his combat knife was broken off in the neck of an Astartes on the ground next to him, leaving the Equerry with his fists and a prayer.

The first traitor to reach for him died with a neo-steel gauntlet buried in his face, the punishment for leaving his helm behind. The second got a hit in, slicing through Dimitri's greave and snapping one of the servo tendons in his leg. As he fell, Dimitri wrapped an arm around his attacker's neck, pulling both of them onto the rubble-strewn ground.

Dimitri reared back, his fist cocked for a killing jab, the traitor's bolt pistol pressed into his cheek.

And then the Mausoleum exploded.

(' ')

Menshaw snarled, spittle flying from his open mouth, looking more like a rockland badger from his homeworld than a man, as he tore into the traitors about him. His lightning claws flashing, the ratling ripped intestines, lungs, hearts, and heads from their places. The blood of Astartes splashed his visor, its thickness resisting his automatic wiper, but Menshaw didn't care. He retracted the visor with a palm and screamed as he dug into a sergeant, utilizing his servo-born strength to pull the Astartes's body apart.

Standing from the corpse, Menshaw faced another opponent, this one facing him with a bolter. The weapon roared and Menshaw shook, jostled by the multiple explosions bursting against his armored body.

The traitor's magazine went dry, and Menshaw still stood, his armor dented, chipped, and sparking, but not destroyed.

The ratling roared and threw himself at the Astartes, claws outstretched.

And then the Mausoleum exploded.

(' ')

Manker headbutted one of the traitors holding him in the face, his broken visor churning the wayward Astartes's eyes into destroyed, pulpy goo. As the blinded Astartes fell back, Manker gunned his chainsword and with his recently freed arm cut the traitor down with a slash to the chest.

The arms holding him pulled tighter, the strength cracking his plating. "Death is upon you, heretic!" snarled the traitor that held him from behind. "You cannot escape it!"

The chainsword revved. "Then you will join me," Manker said, and dug the blade into his own stomach.

Pain ripped through his senses, driving him to the verge of unconsciousness as the roaring teeth ripped his guts out. With both hands, Manker pushed the sword all the way through, gritting his teeth as the blades cut out of his back and into the traitor's chest.

"No…" the traitor whispered.

Manker laughed through bleeding gums. "Oh, I think yes."

And then the Mausoleum exploded.

(' ')

Castarius dueled a rebel sergeant on the edge of the wall of bodies, their footwork light across the unsteady carpet of corpses. Chainsword spanged from chainsword as they fought, Castarius's cold logic arrays dictating every movement he made.

"Soulless!" spat the sergeant. "You fight with no heart!"

"Ironic," Castarius muttered.

The sergeant was about to ask why when one of Castarius's servo clamps broke through his chest plate and tore his heart complex from his body.

And then the Mausoleum exploded.

(' ')

When the flash-blindness of the explosion faded, Dimitri still held himself above the traitor, his fist still cocked in readiness, but he no longer felt the warm steel against his cheek.

Below him, the rebel's eyes were wide, looking past Dimitri. "By the God-Emperor," the Astartes whispered.

Slowly, Dimitri turned to look up.

The White Mausoleum, or what was left of it, orbited the area it had once encompassed, each individual marble slab, brick, and line of mortar maintaining its own space in the complex ballet of debris. At the heart of the amalgam, floating on a pillar of light emerging from the depths of the mountain like an axis to this loose planet of debris, was the Battle Saint.

It hurt to look at him, for the intensity of the white panels on his glowing warplate etched their image into Dimitri's retinas, altogether ignoring the polarization of his visor.

"Blood of Terra," he muttered, not caring that the phrase made no sense.

Jax looked down and smiled at Dimitri, before speaking.

"To me, my Dogs of War," he announced, his voice carrying across the entire battlefield. "It's time to kick ass."

(' ')

Jax landed between Ventris and Sicarius, his impact sending reverberations throughout the entire mountain. He stood to his full height and stared at Sicarius, eyes alight with an internal fire not entirely comforting to the Dogs that looked upon him. His armor was glowing with eye-aching intensity, and as he stood there, Sicarius found it hard to look directly at the Battle Saint.

"So," Jax said, "you wanna try this again?"

Sicarius said nothing, and swung his sword in an overhead strike, a strike that ended against Jax's admantium blade. White light flooded into the Battle Saint's weapon, overpowering the force of the captain's sword. Sicarius's blade shattered moments later, its length blasting away into a billion monomolecular fragments.

Sicarius withdrew, and looked at the smoking hilt in his fist. "Damn."

He looked up and to see Jax's fist smashing into his nose.

Sicarius tried to stand up and Jax kicked him in the gut, flipping him on his back. Lying there, the traitorous captain let out a groan.

"Alright," Jax said, setting a boot on the shattered Aquilla across Sicarius's chest. "I think we're about done here."

Around the Battle Saint, the rebel Ultramarines stilled, unsure what to do now that their commander had been leveled by such a specter of holy force. Such a show seemed to shake their faith in Sicarius's vision, and none wanted to proceed with the mission in light of this sudden change.

Ventris noticed it, and capitalized on the moment.

"Brothers who have strayed and followed this traitorous bastard, if you do not want to be judged heretics, you have this one chance to drop your arms and right your wrongs." He looked around the battlefield, eyes meeting each warrior in turn. "If not, then you will be purged as he has."

At once, several hundred bolters and chainswords clattered to the ground. The surrendering Astartes held their hands high as they were taken by their loyalist kin and subdued, stripped of their power packs to constrict their movement. Three traitors held fast, and a few isolated bolter shots rang out across the mountains as they were dealt with.

Dimitri found Jax just after that stumbling up on malfunctioning leg motors to, make the necessary introductions. "Jax, this is Uriel Ventris, the new Chapter Master of the Ultramarines."

"Okay."

"What happened to you, Jax?" Dimitri asked.

"Now ain't the time, Dimitri."

"Sorry."

"Ain't no big deal." Jax spat on Sicarius, the saliva puddling in his right eye lens where it fizzed in the cold. He looked at Ventris. "So, what ya wanna do with this piece of shit?"

Ventris's face was emotionless as he replied. "For now, we will just detain him. His judgment will come in time."

"Alrighty," Jax replied, lifting his foot.

When it came down, Sicarius's world went dark.

(' ')

Manker was bleeding out when Tellion found him. The Astartes Scoutmaster knelt beside the Kriegan and examined the wound, where Manker had driven his chainsword through his own stomach to impale the traitor grabbing him from behind. They were still linked like this, Manker collapsed atop the bleeding Astartes—but at least he was alive.

How long he would remain so, however, was up for debate.

"Throne of Terra, lad," Tellion breathed. "Most men kill themselves with a bullet to the head."

Manker made a noise halfway between a grunt and a moan. It twisted his gut and made him throw up more blood; he didn't try and laugh again.

"Just get this out of me," he said.

Tellion did just that, reversing the chainsword's spin and revving it out of Manker's stomach with the sickening squish of displacing guts. Pulled free, the smell of opened digestive organs spilled from Manker's ruptured armor, and the Kriegan forced himself to hold back the vomit.

He blinked an icon on the shattered remains of his HUD, and whatever was left of his stimulant system injected a cocktail of painkillers into his blood. It took the edge off, but not much else—he still felt like his innards had been run through a garbage disposal.

Tellion grimaced and shouted out. "Medic! Apothecary! Someone!"

"I can help," said a voice.

Jax trotted up to them, his armor clunking as he crossed the battered ground. The Battle Saint knelt beside Manker, and the lieutenant closed his eyes tighter. This was not simply for the pain, but because it hurt to look at the glowing Confederate.

"Sir—"

"Shut up," Jax said. "I'm working here."

The Battle Saint set a palm on Manker's open stomach, his steel-shod fingers warm to the touch. Manker winced to feel it, but soon his expression softened as the wound in his stomach closed. His guts reorganized themselves within his flesh, and the skin of his belly showed through the gash in his armor as a clear patch of pale white.

"Holy Emperor," Tellion muttered.

"Nope," the Battle Saint remarked, "just Jax. You need anything?"

The Scoutmaster shook his head, unable to speak. In all his considerable years, never had he seen a feat such as that performed so easily, let alone at all. This was completely unprecedented, and in that moment, Torias Tellion became a consummate believer in the Battle Saint.

"Well, you by chance know where the rest of the wounded are?" Jax asked.

"Yes," Tellion managed.

"Okay." Jax set a hand on the Scoutmaster's shoulder. "Can you take me to 'em?"

"Yes."

(' ')

The rest of the day was filled by formalities; Ventris's brothers moved their traitorous kin into seclusion within the Fortress of Hera, detained most effectively within their own powered-down armor, while the rest of the Chapter worked to repair the grounds outside the White Mausoleum to something recognizable as what it once was.

The fleet was brought under control quickly, thanks in large part to the crews' own reluctance to fight, though the pressure of thirteen vessels from the Marines Errant and the Iron Snakes arriving in orbit didn't hurt the negotiations.

Ventris made a speech to the planet and Ultramar as a whole, summarizing the events and assuring the population that the noblest of Astartes were once again in command of their own homeworld, before asking for public opinion on the fate of Sicarius. As it turned out, popular vote concurred with chapter ritual. Sicarius's execution was set for the following dawn.

Jax met with Ventris for a time, one thanking the other as they hashed out the details of a friendship made and what exactly Jax would take with him on the Dogs' return to Terra.

Now, as dusk settled over the world, Jax stood at the bottom of the White Mausoleum's under chambers, his hands placed on the greatest stasis generator in the galaxy.

"We shouldn't be here," Dimitri muttered.

Jax didn't look up from the generator. "We're honorary smurfs, Dimitri. We go where we want to go."

"This feels wrong. It's unnerving."

"What part?"

Dimitri looked up at the figure dominating the middle of the room. The face of Robute Guilliman, his eyes frozen in an eternal slumber, stared back, penetrating Dimitri to his very core.

The Equerry looked away. "Nothing."

Jax shrugged and kept drawing power from the generator, the hum of energy transferring to his palms resonating throughout the chamber. From where Dimitri stood, it looked as though Jax was praying.

"How are you here?" he finally asked.

"How'd I come back, you mean?"

"Yes. That."

Again, the Confederate shrugged. "Dunno. I just died and came back was all."

"Tigurius said you were communing with someone. Someone specific." Dimitri folded his arms. "Did you?"

Jax didn't respond.

"I'll take that as a yes, then. Now what's this glowing business?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Dimitri."

Dimitri held up a dataslate. "Well, if that's the case, then Castarius's guess is better than both of ours. He's run a few scans."

"So what's up?"

"Apparently, you've been bleeding off energy all day, and it's showing up on thermals like a sore thumb." Dimitri scrolled through the tables and charts, skimming the information. "So, while your maximum limit of stored power has increased, you seem to have lost your retention. Without a constant recharge, your energy will 'bleed out', so to speak."

"So the glowing is, what, like a charge meter?" Jax asked.

Dimitri pocketed the slate. "I suppose so."

"That seems kinda stupid."

"So does you not telling me what happened."

Jax turned on his haunches and stared at Dimitri. "You really wanna know?"

"I really do," Dimitri said.

So Jax told him.

Afterward, Dimitri stared at him. The Battle Saint turned back around and continued charging his hands.

"You glad you heard it?" he asked.

"Yes," Dimitri lied.

"Thought as much." Jax popped his neck and stood. "I'm ready. Assemble the men. It's time we got back to Earth. We've got work to do."

**Author's Note: So, couple things here.**

**1) Thinking about keeping Tarrius around for a while.**

**2) Time lapse next time. Looking like a year or so.**

**3) No clue what to fight next. Could use some input.**

**And that's that. Tell me what you think, and I'll see you next time.**

**Oh, and for the record, I thought the dakka parts of this arc rocked. Also, it's good to have Jax back.**

**Later.  
**


	40. Chapter 40: TBAL: A Legion of Dogs

_Greetings, Imperial Citizen!_

_News of the Ultramarine Civil War has brought fear into the hearts of every citizen of Ultramar. Cato Sicarius's uprising destabilized all of the Segmentum, but all is not lost, as just recently, the conflict reached a swift ending thanks to the intervention of the Battle Saint and his Dogs of War, who upon siding with the Astartes loyal to the God-Emperor brought the heretic Cato Sicarius to a quick demise._

_**view attached picts/vid capture**_

_The Battle Saint has blessed the new Chapter Master Uriel Ventris, and after overseeing the execution of the traitor Sicarius, has returned to Terra for a period of recruiting and refitting, as well as a chance to become accustomed to his new role as the Master of the Administratum._

_As always, the Battle Saint urges all citizens to continue in their daily prayers and to observe all nuances of the Imperial Faith._

_Ave Imperator,_

_Dimitri Vlasna, Equerry to the Battle Saint_

Adamus Luchance dropped the cogitator printout to the deck and spat on it. As the acid dissolved the paper, a voice echoed in his head.

"Master, what troubles you?" asked _Sandalphon_.

"The Confederate," Adamus snarled. "He balances me too well. With every world we destroy, he saves two. For every bastard scion of the False Emperor we slay, he reinforces another's power." He slammed a fist into the armrest of his throne, shattering the human bones draped across it. "It has grown… infuriating."

"Let's kill him," Drake put in from the wing of the bridge.

"'Let's kill him'," Adamus mocked. "Says the man who was killed by one of the Saint's minions."

Drake frowned. "I was just making a suggestion."

"You are an idiot," Adamus growled. "Such an endeavor would be too costly. Though we may well succeed, his Dogs of War are too variable a factor. We know not their current strength, and they may well demolish us in any pitched battle."

Drake turned back to the console he was working at, grumbling under his breath.

Adamus snorted in derision and returned to his throne, apparently done with the conversation.

Unseen by the traitor Astartes, a slender arm slinked out from alongside Adamus's throne, snatching the remaining scrap of the astropathic transcription. Pulling it into her cage, Amaranth Vilverin smoothed the paper out against her scarred thigh, running a finger across the signature at the bottom of the page.

Reading Gothic was difficult after so long—years, weeks?—deprived of anything but intermittent torture, but to the fallen battle sister, the signature was all too familiar.

"Dimitri…" she muttered.

"Come again?" Adamus asked, leaning down.

Amaranth looked away, hiding the scrap behind her back. "Nothing, lord."

Adamus smiled. "Indeed. _Sandalphon_, best speed for Carthage. We have appointments to keep."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 40: To Build a Legion: Part 1: A Legion of Dogs_

Dimitri entered the briefing chamber after Jax and took up his place next to the Battle Saint at the head of the long table. Both men popped the seals on their domed helms and set them on the table before them, a bit of ceremony Dimitri himself had devised. After all, tradition was an important thing to establish early on, and the former guardsman was always thinking ahead.

Menshaw and Sternev entered after them and took up positions at the door, lower than the handle in their squat armor. Menshaw's power claws were retracted in peace, but his face was set in a cynical scowl not shared by his companion. Neither, however, let Jax out of their sight, staying true to their self-appointed positions as his bodyguards.

Dimitri paid them little mind, instead focusing on the others around the table. Manker was there with two of his Kriegan Dogs, all three in blackened clad. Manker's helmet, too, was on the table, while his companions kept their faces hidden behind tinted visors a respectful distance from the table.

Yevina Cardigan stood next to Manker. Also armored up in her yellow suit, Yevina struggled for a moment to free her helmet. Wordlessly, Animal Mother stepped forward and helped her, releasing the seals with his huge fingers. Thanking her Catachan bodyguard, Yevina placed her helm on the table. She adjusted the headband over her forehead and smiled weakly at Dimitri, a smile he returned.

Castarius stood by himself, clear at the opposite end of the table. His helmet—a beaked model, as he usually preferred—was set in front of him. The Techmarine favored everyone at the gathering with a hard glare, arms crossed across the bare spot on his armor where the Imperial Aquilla had once been. Apparently, losing his chapter had been harder on the former Executioner than Castarius had let on.

Jax gave his Equerry a knowing look. Dimitri nodded in understanding, and began the briefing.

"It's clear to all that things around this table have not been good as of late. We've all changed in these past months, and not all of that change has been for the better." He looked at the Kriegans. "Manker, your men have blackened all their wargear, including their visors. Why?"

"In remembrance."

"Of your lost soldiers?"

Manker nodded.

"That's fair," Dimitri said. "And Castarius?"

The Astartes glared at him.

"I can see the blank spot on your chest."

The glare deepened.

"Are you just too good for us mere Imperials now?"

Castarius's eyes narrowed, ever so slightly. Dimitri had got to him. Good, that meant this was working.

"Well, your problems are the Dogs' problems, and we're going to fix at least a few of them."

Jax spoke up. "What we did with the Smurfs was cool and all, but there's more to what we do than putting a whiny bitch like Sicarius in his place. We got people and planets to save, and we can't do that with 75 guys, even if they are the best thing since sliced bread. We need more."

"Specifically, a legion more," Dimitri said.

He blinked a toggle on his visor and the hololith embedded in the table flickered to life, rendering an image of the galaxy in slowly rotating green light motes. Several points of interest were highlighted, including ork and tyranid incursion areas, and systems signaling missing or otherwise plagued. There were a lot of highlights.

"The make up of our proposed legion consists of ten companies of one thousand men each; a total of ten thousand men."

"From where, exactly?" Manker asked.

"All over," Jax answered. "Ain't no reason to keep to one place. Leastways, the more different the army, the better. No sense in limiting our options."

"A fair point," the Kriegan conceded.

Yevina put a finger to her chin in thought. "So, who are we getting?"

Dimitri clicked another toggle, bringing up the first node on the galaxy. Nestled as it was in the crux of the Eye of Terror, everyone at the table instantly knew what world the first recruits would come from.

"Cadia," Manker hissed.

"Yes," Dimitri said, ignoring Manker's clear ire, "specifically, an assemblage of one thousand Kasrkins hand-picked for us by Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed. Apparently, the Castellan finds our efforts worthy of his support, and we will be greeted upon arrival by his general staff."

"This gonna be more flag waving?"

Dimitri half-turned to regard Menshaw. "It's a traditional Cadian meeting for off-world dignitaries, reserved specifically for Lord Generals and Astartes Masters."

"Yep," Menshaw sighed, looking at Sternev, "more flag waving."

His fellow ratling sniggered, but quieted in the face of a Vlasna-glare.

The peanut gallery silenced, Dimitri turned back to the meeting. "This will mark the first assemblage of such a unit in Cadian history, and as such, the regiment will be given the honor of being our first company."

"Wonderful." Manker crossed his arms.

Again, Dimitri ignored him. "Other worlds across the galaxy have answered our summons, and offered the best of their planets. Of course, not all these were worth while, but after a screening process, we have determined where to draw from for the rest of the legion."

As he read off the worlds, Dimitri brought up their positions on the galactic map one at a time. "Armageddon, Harakon, Mordant, Mordian, Tallarn, Terrax, Marathon, Zuven, and Nalith."

"What is Nalith?" Manker asked.

"A tiny little rock out in nowhereland," Jax said, holding his thumb and forefinger very close together. "But they say they got some damn good stealthers and snipers, so we're in."

Manker, again, did not look impressed. He directed his next question directly at Dimitri. "Am I to understand that this legion will be commanded directly by the Battle Saint himself?"

Dimitri didn't respond. Jax did.

"You gotta problem with that, Manker?"

The Kriegan didn't hesitate. "Yes, I do. Your duties may have originally possessed an emphasis on combat command, but your recent tendencies to accommodate more maritime goals, such as your new High Lord status, have left your military leadership skills lacking. It is my belief that a leader so prone to a liberal agenda concerned with speechmaking and politicking cannot also wield the power of a general with equal skill."

Jax stared at him for a moment before nodding to Dimitri. "Man's got a point."

"That he does," Dimitri agreed. "Manker, is it your belief that the legion needs an overall military commander in addition to the Battle Saint?"

"Yes," Manker replied, without hesitation.

"Well, so do we," Jax said.

Dimitri leaned on the table. "In fact, we reached that conclusion at 2300 last night, and made the decision of who it should be at 2330."

Manker's face didn't change. "And who did you decide on?"

"You!" Jax shouted, grinning.

Manker blinked. "What?"

"You," Dimitri reiterated. "You were the best candidate. You understand how to work in the armor, and you're the most analytical and professional soldier either of us has ever seen."

"You're the man for the job, Manker." Jax walked around the table and clapped the Kriegan on the shoulder with the bang of neo-steel striking neo-steel. "Congratulations, General."

Manker blinked rapidly as scattered applause swept around the room. It was to be one of only two occasions in his life where he neared the action of crying.

As the clapping died down, he stated a fact. "We only have 84 active suits."

"We're working on more," Dimitri said. "Castarius, if you would?"

The Techmarine cleared his throat and spoke, filling the chamber with his inhumanly baritone voice. "Through careful scans and first-hand study of the CMC-300 combat powered armor, I have made strides in understanding Shadow World technology, and am able to replicate most of it. These replications include the servos, much of the targeting and translocational soft-cogitation arrays, and a passable imitation of the substance known as 'neo-steel'.

"Of course, some adjustments have been made at the Battle Saint's request." One of Castarius's mechadendrites jacked into the table and went live. The hololith flickered and showed a new image, that of a suit of power armor very similar to that worn around the table.

"As you can see, there are some superficial design differences," Castarius said. "The bubble helm has been done away with in favor of a more conservative, full-head design with a cross visor. Shoulder guards are now larger, and the joints of the suits are now covered by overlapping ceramite bands as opposed to the nano-wrapped neo-steel of the 300 mark."

"Why?" Manker asked.

"Cost," Castarius replied. "Each suit already costs as much as a small frigate. To armor the joints completely would not have been cost-effective."

Manker nodded in apparent understanding. The next question came from Yevina.

"What's with the visor?"

"Protection. The current bubble variant provides supreme visibility, but is too great a liability."

"No, I mean, why's it a cross?"

Dimitri answered. "The cross is allusive of a crusade. It was a symbol of progress during the Emperor's original march to the stars, and symbolizes hope for a better tomorrow. The Black Templar Astartes still wear a variant of it upon their shoulder guards."

"Your idea?" Yevina asked.

Dimitri nodded. "My idea."

Castarius continued talking, ignoring their conversation. "8,000 units have already been produced, and within the next month, the first line will be completed. Spare parts assembly will take place after that, and then I will begin work on a second line after field reports pinpoint inaccuracies in the production and programming of the initial lot."

"8,000 already?" Menshaw muttered, too low for anyone to hear.

"Yes," Castarius replied, "already. Mars works fast."

Menshaw swallowed his gum. Apparently, too low for anyone wasn't too low for an Astartes.

Jax returned to the head of the table. "So, that about wraps it up. We leave for Cadia tomorrow morning, so get yer shit packed and ready. Manker, your guys'll need to drill, and Cardigan?"

"Yes, sire?"

"You and me need to do some prepping for this jump. Everyone else, fall out!"

**Author's Note: Okay, so it's short. I'll tell you why this is so.**

**In the past week, I attempted to write this chapter in four different ways. Each was an attempted time-lapse, and each fell flat on its time-lapsing face. Finally, I accepted that this story simply will not lapse through time as I want it to, and have since decided to write through the month or so that I wanted to skip. **

**What that means is that this next arc will cover two planets a chapter, meaning that, excluding the above 2,227 words, it will be five chapters long-five hefty, content and combat-filled chapters, so that by the time it's done, there will be a legion of Dogs under Jax's command.  
**

**So, in short, this chapter was exposition. I'm sorry. I really would have liked to do Cadia in this chapter, but the failed time-lapses (pardon this pun) ate up my time. **

**I hope that it at least teased you with some upcoming fun with who we might see again. Each of those planets Jax named carry some weight in the background, either of 40k cannon or of the shit I've made up. I mean, you saw Marathon in there, right?**

**Oh, and to ease the blow, I've given you another story to munch on. It's called _Green is Best_. You may know the main character. The first chapter is up. Knock yourself out.  
**


	41. Chapter 41: TBAL: Violet Eyes, Ashen Sky

Ursarkar E. Creed, Lord Castellan of Cadia, stood on the landing fields outside of Kasr Derth, a broad expanse of deadland made inhospitable by combat. After centuries of being assaulted endlessly by the forces of Chaos, the grass outside of Cadia's largest city had simply ceased to grow.

In a way, Creed liked it that way. There was a fun sort of poetic irony in that while Cadia itself died, the Cadians themselves slogged on, fighting back in their eternal struggle against the forces of the Great Eye.

A sampling of all the Cadian military was present, with lines of tanks and assembled infantry stretching to the horizon through the dead expanse, their camouflage fatigues and armor blending with the darkened horizon. The chosen thousand stood at the heart of the assembly, a hundred feet from Creed. Behind the Castellan stood his own regiment, the Cadian 8th, or the 'Lord Castellan's Own' as they liked to tote themselves.

In all, over 20,000 men stood at parade rest on the landing fields of Kasr Derth. They had been for the past hour, and Creed was getting restless.

"When were they supposed to arrive?" he asked.

"1100, lord."

"And what time is it now?"

"1230, lord."

Creed adjusted his cloak, though no breeze had disturbed it. To Jarran Kell, Creed's color sergeant and oldest friend, it might as well have been a shout.

"Urk, he's a Battle Saint," Kell said. He was closer to the Castellan than before, his voice lower than a whisper, as it always was when he spoke so informally. "Cut him some slack."

"Slack?" Creed scoffed. "Jarran, my old friend, it doesn't take a tactical genius to be on time."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 41: To Build a Legion: Part 2: Violet Eyes and Ashen Skies_

_Fshwambamfamf!_

Dimitri retched, gagged, and forced the bile back down his throat. After a moment, his stomach finally felt like it was in the right place again, and he looked up at the sky. Even through is visor, the sky was tinged with the magenta swirl of the Eye of Terror. The vastness of the Chaos spill over into realspace made him dizzy, and he forced himself to focus on the soldiers in front of him.

"Ya alright, Dimitri?" Jax's body was glowing, which was good; after seven hours absorbing the energy of a tyran-class fusion reactor, he damn well should have been.

"In a minute, Jax," the Equerry replied. "Just give me a minute."

Manker's voice washed across the unit-wide commlink, barking movement orders and stances. Around the command squad, the seventy-five blackened Dogs of War assembled in standard Kriegan parade formation, squad-by-squad, rifle held across the chest.

To the Cadians, it was an impressive sight.

Fifty feet behind the Confederate's landing party, Colonel Kellan Thade stood straighter. After twenty years in the Cadian Shock, Thade had seen a lot. He'd served in anti-Chaos raids throughout the Scarus Sector, fought in the 13th Black Crusade and the years after that, taking back Cadia from the Archenemy. He had fought alongside Astartes from three separate chapters, including the Fleshtearers and the Raven Guard, and in all that time Thade hadn't thought he would ever see something as impressive as an Astartes in full battle plate.

Now, as he looked at the Battle Saint, Captain Thade stood corrected.

"Throne," muttered the soldier beside him. "Look at their armor."

Thade grinned. "Trooper Hale, you're salivating."

"Am not!" The Whiteshield crossed his arms and looked away from his commander. "They just look neat, all right?"

"All right," Thade replied. "I'm messing with you, Hale."

"With respect, Colonel, screw off."

Thade laughed. Trooper Hale was a public icon: the Teenage Hero of Kasr Vallock, the Whiteshield who killed Calabas the Skinflayer. He was the people's hero of the month, and with good reason. Hale knew eight different ways to break a man's neck at 13, more than Thade knew at 42. Still, messing with him was irresistible.

Across the way, the Battle Saint marched up to Creed, both command squads meeting in the middle of the field. As Thade watched, the Lord Castellan shook the Battle Saint's hand, with Creed almost obscured by the white light radiating from the Saint.

And then they disappeared behind a mountain of black armor.

Thade looked up at the Dog in front of him. The soldier's visor slid back, revealing a gaunt, ashen face staring down at him. The man's eyes were empty, as black as his armor—like a doll's eyes. Nevertheless, he had a general's markings on his chest, and Thade was a good Cadian, so he snapped off a crisp salute.

"Colonel Kellan Thade, 1st Assembled Kasrkins, sir."

"Thade, I am General Harken Manker of the Dogs of War," the soldier replied. He gestured to the other seventy some-odd Dogs moving out along the Cadian formation, servos growling. "These are the Blackened Guards, my personal soldiers. They will inspect your troops and report back to me."

Thade nodded. "I understand, General."

He really did. No commander wanted to admit new recruits without a rudimentary inspection. Thade had done similar checks before himself, when admitting Whiteshields or imports from other Shock regiments into his unit.

Manker looked at Hale. "Is this your adjutant, Colonel?"

"No, General. This is—"

"I'm Trooper Hale, the Hero of Kasr Vallock!" Hale piped. "I killed Calabas the Skinflayer in hand-to-hand combat!"

If the General was impressed, it didn't show. "Calabas the Skinflayer was a second rate Chaos warlord, not even the equal of a Traitor Astartes. That is not impressive."

"The people of Cadia disagree with you!" Hale shouted.

"I could care less about the opinion of the Cadian people."

Hale squared himself with the General. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

Manker smiled thinly. "I'm a Kriegan, boy. I know what war is, and I don't dress it up with honors and propaganda."

"So what're you saying?"

"That your people are an overzealous lot of overrated soldiers who wouldn't know a real war if it came up and hit them with a nuke."

Thade knew what the General was doing, and repressed the anger that such a comment would normally draw out. He also knew that even if he had not known that Manker was testing the boy, he wouldn't try to fight the General. The Kriegan was in two-ton power armor, he was in carapace armor and cloth. Fighting would be foolish.

But Hale was fourteen years old, and that was a grievous insult to his planet, his people, and his way of life, and doing something foolish was his specialty.

Hale swung his lascarbine down off his shoulder and swung it up, discharging a quick spurt of red at the General's head. Manker's visor snapped down and the lasbolt panged off of it in recoil.

Manker moved faster than Thade could track him, one moment standing still, the next holding Hale two feet above the ground, his hand palming the Whiteshield's chest. Hale's carbine was on the ground nearby, its barrel broken in half and trailing a smoking drizzle of ozone-smelling steam.

Hale's feet kicked against his captor's stomach, and his fingers pried at the gauntlet holding him aloft. Manker gripped tighter, and Thade heard Hale's flak armor creak and break.

"Let me go!"

"I could kill you now," Manker said.

Thade saw the truth of that dawn on Hale, cutting through his haze of perceived invincibility. Suddenly, the Whiteshield seemed much sobered.

"Would you let me down?" he asked.

Manker released him and let him fall to the hardpan. Hale collapsed to his knees, rubbing his chest beneath his flak jacket and coughing. The General looked down at him.

"You are a fast draw," he said. "And against a weaker opponent would be a great fighter. I can see how you killed Calabas." Manker set his boot on the broken lascarbine and leaned his weight on it with ease, crushing it into the dirt. "But you are foolish, and run by anger. That will fade with age. In time, you will be a powerful Dog of War."

Hale coughed again. "Thank you, lord."

Manker ignored him and turned to Thade. "Colonel, form your men up ahead. Tell them to prepare for teleportation to Terra."

"Yes, sir."

The General walked away without further comment, striding out across the field, his seventy-five bodyguards following him. Beyond him, Thade saw the Battle Saint bidding farewell to the Lord Castellan.

"Regiment, forward!" Thade called, and the men of the 1st Assembled Kasrkins moved out, sweeping past their commander and onto the assembly area. A cheer rose up through the ranks of tanks and infantry on the fields around them, a final salute to Cadia's chosen sons.

Thade knelt beside Hale for a moment, setting a hand on the younger man's shoulder. "You all right, Trooper?"

Hale didn't respond.

"C'mon, then," Thade said, grabbing Hale by the webbing of his ammo pouches, "we're moving out."

Reluctantly, Hale followed Thade onto the field. They reached the formation just in time for the Battle Saint to raise his arm.

A sound grew, filling the air with the cry of a choir of angels.

"Here we go," Thade muttered.

_Fshwambamfamf!_

This time, Dimitri puked, splattering his tossed breakfast against the inside of his visor. His ammo readout was still there, projected on a heap of churned sausage. Somehow, the sight struck Dimitri as funny.

"Ya all right, Dimitri?"

Dimitri retracted his visor, the sliding mechanism scrapping off the vomit. What was left dripped down onto the rim of his helmet, the liquid content pooling against his neck. Dimitri had to fight back more bile.

"That's gakking gross," Menshaw muttered. Next to him, Sternev was laughing hysterically.

Dimitri frowned. "You sound like a choking squirrel."

Sternev stopped laughing, and Menshaw glared at Dimitri. "You always gotta play the race thing."

"Seriously," Sternev added, following his partner away from the gardens.

Nearby, Thade stood with Hale, looking at the gardens and the city beyond. "Throne of Terra," he muttered.

"I know," Hale agreed. "It's incredible."

"No." Thade pointed into the distance. "I mean it. Throne of Terra."

Hale looked, and his mouth fell open. It closed and opened a few more times, but achieved little aside from looking like a fish.

"**It is quite a sight."**

Thade pulled his gaze from the Inner Palace and looked up to see the form of an Astartes Dreadnought standing above him, its faceless front bearing down on him. Again, he was speechless.

"**You are the Cadians,"** said the Dreadnought. **"I am Brother Tarrius of the Ultramarines. Welcome to Terra."**

Thade was still getting over his awe when Hale spoke up. "Are you one of the Dogs?" asked the Whiteshield.

Tarrius made a sound like a brake pad grinding against a rusty wheel well. **"Throne, no! I am on loan from my chapter as a guest warrior, here to honor the help the Dogs of War lent us during our civil war."**

"Oh," Hale said.

"**Indeed. Now, if you would kindly clear the gardens, I believe the Battle Saint has another jump to execute."**

Thade led his Cadians out of the gardens behind the Dreadnought, leaving the Dogs of War in the clear for another jump. At the heart of the Dogs' position, Jax stood with Castarius, leaching power off a leaking fusion pack held in the Techmarine's servo clamps.

"Feels pretty good, Castarius," Jax said. Castarius didn't respond. "Tastes good, too."

Still no response.

"What vintage is this, anyway?" Jax asked.

Finally, Castarius looked up at him. "Do not take this the wrong way, lord, but you are not humorous."

"Well, ya could at least be polite…"

"What would be polite in this instance?"

Jax shrugged. "I dunno, a laugh would be a good start."

Castarius stood for a moment, not responding. Finally, he gave a solitary 'ha' and went back to the dials on the pack.

Jax frowned. "Thanks, Castarius." He took his hands away from the pack and the Techmarine walked away.

Dimitri stepped up alongside his Battle Saint. "What was that about?"

"Just Castarius being Castarius," Jax replied.

"Figures." Dimitri looked up at him. "You ready for the next jump?"

"Yup. You?"

"Shut up."

Jax grinned and placed his hand on Yevina's shoulder. "Here we go…"

_Fshwambamfamf!_

(' ')

The plan had been simple enough: lead the regiment onto the field and await the Dogs' arrival at 1100, and he had followed those orders to the letter. He had held on the field outside of Helsreach for half an hour until a general distress call sang out across the vox.

Out in the wastes, a convoy of civilian trucks had run across a patch of orks and let off a call for help. Pinned as they were on the shores of the River Stygies, the civilians could do little more than die against the alien swarm.

So, Colonel Dafford Hawke had done the sensible thing and led his regiment in to save them.

All shock troops of the Armageddon Steel Legion, Hawke's men were the best of the very best, and met the orks head-on. Las blasts lit the smoke-choked riverbank as they pushed in, mounted in open-topped Chimera APCs. Heavy weapons opened fire seconds later, thunking heavy bolt rounds into the fray, exploding xenos heads and torsos. The civilians screamed.

"Keep on them," Hawke said over the vox-set built into his gasmask. "Don't let up."

Just then, an ork vehicle slammed into the right flank of Hawke's Chimera. The bladed dozer mounted on its fore became lodged in the APC's tracks, and as the xenos vehicle pushed, the Chimera began to roll. Hawke gripped the edge of the plating and held on against the roll, waiting until the motion ceased.

Now with both vehicles immobile, the orks began to stand and move from their truck into the Imperial vehicle.

Hawke met them halfway.

Standing, the Steeler Colonel jumped out of the Chimera and onto the truck's hood. His hellgun discharged once, twice, three times, and an ork stumbled, his chest perforated. Hawke knocked him to the dirt and moved past him, hellgun tossing rounds into the next two orks.

He jumped their falling bodies. In front of him, the next xenos hefted its axe and roared. Hawke landed on its chest and jammed his bayonet into its neck before ejecting its brains from its head.

Hawke stood from the dead ork and spotted the truck's driver struggling with a gearshift made from a lead pipe. The greenskin was grunting and cursing in its unintelligible tongue. Hawke put a burst in its face and dropped a grenade in the bed before hopping down and walking away. Behind him, the truck exploded, the remaining orks launching into the air on plumes of jetting blood.

A stubber round cut the air next to his head and Hawke fired back. The ork fell to the dirt, and three more took its place. Hawke hit two of them, but the third closed with him, and soon he found himself on his back, dodging the beast's crude blade thrusts.

Hawke dodged a thrust and pulled out his own knife, going blade-to-blade with the greenskin, holding it back with quick strikes to its exposed chin, shoulder, and chest. Thanks to its helmet, there was no chance of a neck or eye shot, so Hawke was left to fend it off as long as he could.

Around the two, the regiment was quickly finding that there were more orks involved in the battle than had been originally estimated. Xenos were pulling out of the woodwork, from behind every rock and dune imaginable, and from some places that violated all expectations.

"Hostiles to the east!" the vox shouted. "They're, wait, that can't be…"

"The river! The orks are coming out of the Throne-damned river!"

That was an interesting change of things. Hawke didn't hear it. He was busy dealing with the rusty blade imbedded in his shoulder.

The ork howled in his face and raised his other weapon—a colossal axe—for the kill-stroke.

_Fshwambamfamf!_

The ork's brain splashed across Hawke's face, the result of a hypersonic spike ripping through its skull, back to front. The body slumped on him, and the Steeler Colonel had to force it off of him with great effort.

His savior was armored in black, a seven-foot warrior of neo-steel. The black Dog held out his hand and helped Hawke to his feet. Even at his full height, Hawke still looked like a midget alongside the armored titan.

"You're Colonel Hawke of the 16th Regiment of the Armageddon Steel Legion."

It wasn't a question, but Hawke nodded as if it were.

"I am General Harken Manker of the Dogs of War." He gestured to the other seventy some-odd Dogs moving throughout the smoke screen, their weapons making the occasional burst of tearing spike fire as they ended greenskin after greenskin. "These are the Blackened Guard, my personal soldiers."

An ork ran up, bellowing a challenge. At once, both Manker and Hawke spun around and unloaded into it. The greenskin shook with the impacts and tumbled to the dirt.

Manker looked at Hawke. "You're a good shot."

"The best," Hawke agreed, changing the regulator on his hellgun. "I'll be untouchable with one of those." He gestured at the Impaler.

"That's very frank of you."

"Shooting around the ork never got me anywhere, General. I'll take frank over dead any day."

"Fair enough." Even through the visor, Hawke was certain the General was grinning. "The xenos infestation here will be dealt with momentarily. My men are pushing them back to the west into whatever cave they came from."

"But there are hostiles to the east, too," Hawke said.

Manker nodded. "The river, yes. I believe the Battle Saint is personally dealing with that."

(' ')

Dimitri pushed the ork back on the point of a hundred spikes, tearing holes through its body and pushing it farther into the river. When his magazine ran dry, the ork splashed face-first into the water, its snorkel-helm doing little to staunch the bloodflow.

Around Dimitri, the command squad and a group of three hundred Steelers were pushing back the ork tide. The greenskins had spent hours swimming up-stream, their snorkels disguised as debris and mixed in with what was floating down from Helsreach. The hive was still damaged, and the odds and ends of its destruction made for good cover.

Now, all those hours of preparation seemed a waste to the orks, who were dying in frustration as they emerged from the depths of the River Stygies into a withering hail of hellshot and spikes. A smarter force would have retreated, but not these kommandos. Their leaders slogged forth, ignoring the rounds that chipped at his armor, and bellowed a war cry into Jax's face, lifting its hammer for a fight.

In movement too fast for Dimitri's tracking systems, Jax drew his blade and sliced the nob's neck open. The ork's head bounced down the bank and into the river, its body fell into the mud, and the Steelers cheered.

"Good work," Dimitri said.

Jax shrugged. "I do what I can."

The Confederate brought up his Impaler and resumed firing. The sight rallied the Steelers, and in the next thirty seconds, all that was left of the kommandos had been purged from the riverside. Two survivors tried to run, and Yevina dropped them from range with twin headshots.

She lowered her rifle and looked over at Dimitri, smiling. "I'm getting better, aren't I?"

"Definitely," he agreed.

She started to speak again, but Dimitri wasn't listening anymore. He had moved on to dealing with the Steeler Colonel marching down from the burning caravan. Manker was there, following Hawke from a distance.

As a war council started, Yevina let out a sigh.

"It's okay," her bodyguard assured her. "You'll get to talk to him."

"When, Casey? When he's dead from exhaustion?"

Animal Mother shook his head. "No, when we get back to Terra."

"He's busy there, too," Yevina countered. "He works himself half to death for this unit, Casey."

"Dimitri Vlasna can take care of himself, Ms. Cardigan."

She frowned. "I just want to be there for him."

"You can be, when he needs you." The big Catachan set a hand on her shoulder. "Just give it time."

"Cardigan!" a voice called out. Looking up, Yevina saw Jax waving to her. "We gotta go back, now! I need yer help!"

"I'll be right there, Battle Saint."

_Fshwambamfamf!_

**Author's Note: I don't know for sure how many consecutive weeks I've gone without missing an update, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere between a handful and a shitload, so I'm going to give myself a pat on the back. Yay me.**

**So, Thade's a pro, Hale's capable but kind of a turd, and Hawke's just a badass. Not every regiment is going to have two name characters, it just so happened that the Cadians ended up with that as the case. The Tallarn will as well, I'm fairly certain. **

**At least, that's what my outline tells me. But then again, my outline has been known to smoke pot and give me jank-ass information, so who knows?**

**Also, if you do the math, with ten regiments and at least one name character each, you're looking at a pretty imposing character roster, which would necessitate some house-cleaning, wouldn't it?  
**

**It may be a little early to pass judgment, but tell me what you think of these newbies. Or just rave about the 4chan joke at the end of the pre-title section. Your pick.**

**Next time, Tallarn Desert Raiders and Harakoni Warhawks.**

**Now I'm off to update that Gort thing. Later.  
**


	42. Chapter 42: TBAL: Raiders, Hawks of War

Raider-Colonel Mondus Arad pulled on the reins of his mukaali, bringing it to heel at the crest of a dune. Behind him, the rest of the 7th Tallarn Rough Riders did the same, their animals silent as they came to a stop. Adjusting his lascarbine on its strap, Arad pulled a pair of magnoculars from his saddle bag and looked out across the desert below.

The magnoculars' readout hummed with static, and gave him a negative bleep. Arad frowned, shook it, and tried again. Again, he got a negative bleep.

"No friendlies spotted," he muttered. "Where the hell are the sand-blasted sentinels?"

Beside him, Major Sergeant Avi's mukaali shifted in the sand. Avi himself peered across the desert, hand shielding his eyes against the heat of the Insolyn sun.

"I don't know," he said. "Want to use the vox?"

Arad shook his head. "No, you do it. Try and raise Mode. Ask him where the hell he's run his two-legged arse off to."

"And if he makes a cavalry joke?"

"Tell him that I like mukaali better, and so does his mother."

Avi smiled and popped the vox horn from his saddle caster.

As his second in command dialed in the frequency and spoke out a trans-code, Arad took another look around, the magnoculars droning a steady scanning signal.

Two months. They had been on this sandball called Insolyn for two months, accompanied by the 219th Hyrkan Mechanized Infantry and an attachment of fellow Tallarn in Mode's sentinel platoon. Two months of long days searching an endless desert, and long nights of arguing in the command tent with the Hyrkan command staff about how to properly work in this environment. Colonel Daubin had had little to do with Arad's advice, and to date had changed nothing in his strict doctrine to accommodate the necessities of a desert war.

But despite Daubin's stupidity, statistically, they should have _accidentally_ found something by now. In two months, though, not one sighting, even a false one, had been made of hostile forces. Where ever the enemy was hiding, they were doing it well.

"Nothing," Avi grunted. He slammed the vox horn down in annoyance. "Not a sand-blasted thing."

Arad was about to reply when his magnoculars beeped positive. Arad turned in his saddle, adjusting his sights to the west. Something trotted across the dunes, vaguely avian in its leg design and unintelligible from such a distance. Eagerly, the Raider-Colonel increased his magnification, identifying the figure as a sentinel.

"Looks like Mode's sent us back a runner." Arad lowered his magnoculars. "I guess that all the vox-systems in the world can't replace a good messenger, eh?"

Avi didn't share his superior's smile. "That's smoke."

Arad looked again at the sentinel. The nearer it drew, the more he agreed with his second's assessment; the walker was smoking, belching black smog into the sky from some unseen damage. When it was a hundred feet from the regiment, and still showing no signs of slowing down, Arad sent up a ready order.

Along the dune, the Rough Riders of the 7th Tallarn drew up carbines. The mukaali didn't stir. The animals knew this drill.

The sentinel didn't stop, and as it came upon the lines, Arad moved aside. It trotted through the regiment, the Tallarn parting before it like waves. As it passed, Arad got a good look at the damage done to it, including over a hundred pockmarks, a scorch across its blast shield, and, still strapped into his seat, the dead body of Colonel Lukas Mode, a kroot dagger jutting from his neck.

The sentinel marched on, its lolling gait carrying it out across the desert on an infinite trot, its accelerator paddle stuck under the weight of its dead master.

Arad felt himself grow angry. "Major Sergeant, how long before our meeting with the Battle Saint?"

"Six hours, sir," Avi replied through gritted teeth.

"Good." Arad turned his mukaali toward the open dunes from which the sentinel had come. "That gives us just enough time to kill every kroot bastard in this desert. Rough Riders, onward!"

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 42: To Build a Legion: Part 3: Raiders of the Desert/Hawks of War_

Wind howled through the open bay of the Valkyrie, and despite the weight of the armor encasing him, Dimitri Vlasna wobbled with vertigo. The deck, such as it was, whipped by three thousand meters below, a shamble of primal cliffs and fjords several kilometers wide.

"We call it the Craggle!" shouted the man to his left. "Insurgent groups like to use it as a safe-zone! The cliffs make any armor support unfeasible, so they've been dropping us in and out of here for the past month on hit and run ops to weed out the stragglers!"

Colonel Setsui was smiling as he said this, and, as far as Dimitri was concerned, seemed entirely too comfortable about jumping out of a moving aircraft. The Warhawks of the Colonel's 22nd Harakoni had a reputation as drop troops, though, and as the Colonel himself had explained it, were all to thrilled to have the Dogs of War along for the ride.

"We were looking at another three weeks before we'd have enough support in these mountains to take on the heretics' base, but with you at the front, we'll be done in no time!"

"Lucky us," Dimitri muttered.

Jax moved back from the cockpit, nodding to the Harakoni gearing up around the bay, and stopped next to Setsui and Dimitri. "We all set?"

Setsui nodded. "We'll be over the drop zone in a few minutes! Do you all understand how to work your gravchutes?"

The command squad—Yevina, Animal Mother, Jax, and Dimitri—nodded. Menshaw and Sternev did not, as neither ratling wore one.

In Menshaw's own words, if his armor could protect him from a thunder hammer but not from a little stumble, then he would rather just get it over with.

Setsui listened to his vox-bead for a moment before looking back up. "We're thirty seconds from drop. Before we go, I'd just like to say that it's an honor to have you with us, Battle Saint, and I hope that what you see in the next half-hour will convince you to bring the Harakoni into your family."

"Can't wait to see it, Colonel," Jax replied.

Setsui nodded, still smiling as he fixed his oxygen mask on over his mouth. "Kinsmen of Harakoni, prepare yourselves!"

Across the bay and in the holds of the twenty other valkyries surrounding them, the Warhawks sealed their drop armor and charged their lasguns. Anti-aircraft fire buffeted the drop wing, and as the red jumplight flickered green, Dimitri said a silent prayer to the Emperor. He figured he would need all the help he could get on this one.

"Into the clouds!" Setsui shouted and leaped from the open doors, falling out of sight.

Dimitri tried to swallow, cursed when he realized he had no spit, and followed the Colonel into freefall.

(' ')

The Tallarn came upon the rest of Mode's sentinel squadron two hours later. They had seen the smoke from three kilometers out, but only when they were within half that had the meaning of it become apparent to their nostrils. The scent was even stronger amid the dead, a pungent stench of seared flesh and burning promethium. The mukaali, with their animalistic senses, snorted at the smell.

Sentinels, twenty in all, lay scattered between the dunes. Some were on their sides, pilot cabins destroyed in arrays of scattered glass, while others yet stood, their engines on fire. One walker still kicked where it lay, the exposed workings of its knee twitching in a kind of technical death spasm.

Arad shot it with his lascarbine. The report echoed across the desert, the leg went still, and Arad holstered his weapon.

"Sweet Terra," he muttered.

Alongside him, Major Sergeant Avi turned in the saddle. "Come again, Raider-Colonel?"

"There's no enemy dead," Arad said, adjusting his facemask. The stench was almost too much to bear. "They must have moved them after the fight. I refuse to believe that Mode went down without killing a single enemy."

"It fits the profile," Avi replied. "The kroot are known to eat their dead."

Arad shook his head, and was about to comment on the brutish nature of the xenos when he noticed something. Sand on a dune to the east shifted, sloshing down over itself like a wave on the ocean before stopping. Arad watched, and it happened again.

"What is it, sir?" Avi asked. When Arad didn't reply, the Major Sergeant looked around, and quickly stiffened.

Behind his mask, Arad smiled without humor. "You see it too, then?"

"Yes." Avi tugged the reins of his mukaali twice, and the creature snapped its head up, ready for a fight. "Orders?"

Arad touched his vox-bead. "Riders, don't make it obvious, but prepare for immediate enemy contact. Get ready for a quick draw, lads, and keep away from the sentinels. They're probably booby trapped."

Along the line, the Tallarn readied for battle. Lasguns came out, and the air was filled with the subtle click-rev of chainsword ignitions. Sensing the tension in their riders' movement, the mukaali stood straighter, noticing the signs of an impending fight.

Avi pulled out his own sword, a curved Tallarn gladius, while the Raider-Colonel switched on his power falx, wreathing the ornate blade in crackling blue force. He hefted the weapon and spun it in his calloused palm, the blade cutting a circle in the air with every rotation.

On his third spin, the kroot emerged from the dunes and attacked with a hooting war cry. Xenos powder weapons boomed, Tallarn lasguns cracked, and the thin desert air was soon filled by the sounds of slaughter.

A kroot warrior sprang off the burning wreck of a sentinel and powered in at Arad, its bladed rifle held up for a downward kill strike. Arad swung his falx, the curved blade halving the rifle and biting into the alien's arm. The kroot howled in pain and fell to the sand, where its head was crushed by Arad's mukaali.

Rearing back, Arad fired into the advancing kroot, dropping aliens with each blast of his lascarbine.

"Tallarn," he shouted, "slaughter them all!"

(' ')

The Harakoni Warhawks attacked with a speed that Dimitri had never before seen in a regiment of the Imperial Guard. They moved in perfect concert, with each element of the force doing its part on a squad level. They took ground cliff-by-cliff in a hopscotch methodology, with advancing troopers covered by heavy weapons and mortar teams that, when their maximum range had been reached, moved up under the cover of the infantry to set up, sight in, and begin another bombardment.

Dimitri followed Colonel Setsui's command squad, lending his Impaler to the fight where he could. The colonel led them along an outcropping, cutting under a waterfall inches from a three hundred foot drop to the river below. Water hammering down on them, the Warhawks moved without pause, their feet limber on the slick rocks. Soon, Dimitri found himself lagging behind, forced to punch his own handholds in the rock to keep from falling.

"Come on, Mr. Vlasna!" Setsui shouted back, smile evident in his tone. "We've got them on the run!"

"Where does this path lead?" Dimitri replied.

"Nowhere!" Setsui's grin must have been very large as he pulled a latch on his pack. "But we've got a strong updraft here!" A pair of blue light wings opened from his back, materializing in front of Dimitri's face.

"Updraft?"

"Yes!" Setsui indicated the glider wings he and his troopers were assembling. "For the gliders! This way, we can make a rapid-strike into the cliffs across the way!"

Dimitri wanted to ask another question, but Setsui had moved on, talking into his vox. "Mortar teams, do you have the opposite cliffs sighted in? Yes? Good, good. Platoons 2, 3, 4, and 6, follow us in!"

Setsui looked back at Dimitri and held out his hand. "Come, then, Mr. Vlasna!"

"You're going to carry me across?" Dimitri was incredulous.

"Oh, heavens no!" Setsui laughed. "I want you to throw me!"

"What!"

"Your power armor's strength ought to give me a little boost, right?"

"I can't throw you!"

"Why not? You have my permission."

"What if you die?"

"Then I would be dead, wouldn't I? That was a very strange question, Mr. Vlasna." Setsui turned his back on Dimitri and lifted his lasgun to his chest. "Now then, please lift by the metal holds on my pack, not the leather ones, and do be careful to get me free of the waterfall quickly. I would rather not become a stain on the chop rocks below us."

Dimitri, finally resigned to the idea, grabbed the colonel and heaved him out. Setsui splashed free of the waterfall and into the open air. The rest of his regiment quickly followed suit, and together, four hundred Harakoni Warhawks flew across the canyon on wings of blue, descending on the heretic base.

(' ')

The krootox refused to retreat with its brethren, and died under the combined strikes of Arad's power falx and Avi's gladius, its body weeping blood as it collapsed to the sand, crushing its rider under its furred weight.

The rest of the kroot fled out of the depression, scampering away from the fight on their nimble legs. A few paused to fire shots back at the Tallarn. These few brave xenos were gunned down immediately and without mercy, their bodies twitching as lasfire punched them to the ground.

"Units sound off!" Avi belted in the quiet aftermath. His voice carried across the battlefield easily, one of the chief aspects for which Arad appreciated Avi, and in a moment, responses were flooding in over the inter-regiment vox. The picture was a clear one, and was just about as bad as Arad had feared.

Two mukaali had died in the battle, and there were seven men with injuries, four of them critical. Twelve men were dead, killed when a sentinel exploded near their position. The kroot had booby trapped them, then.

Arad shook his head. Never before had he hated being right so much.

"Prepare a funeral detail to escort the dead back to the camp," he ordered. "Tell them to take the riderless animals with them as pack mules."

Avi nodded. "And what of the rest of us?"

Arad reloaded his lascarbine. He had seven magazines left—plenty for the task ahead.

"I'm taking the rest on ahead. You're not coming with us."

Avi sat up in his saddle, face flustered. "Raider-Colonel, with all due respect—"

"You're going back to the base." Avi had a loud voice, to be sure, but he wasn't loud enough to talk over Arad when the raider-colonel drew that tone. "When the Battle Saint arrives, you will lead him to meet with us. Take vehicles from the Hyrkans if you have to."

"I don't understa—"

"Listen to me!" Arad shouted. "If we break the chase now, we'll lose the sand-blasted scent of those bastards, and I'm not about to let those Hyrkans slog through another six months dealing with an entrenched enemy just because we didn't finish the job before we ran off to play war with the sand-blasted Battle Saint!"

Arad sat back in his saddle and straightened his uniform. "Now then, you are to head back to the base and wait for the Battle Saint. By the time he gets here and you lead he and his men out to our location, we should have followed these xenos back to whatever cave they came from, and together we'll flush them out and be done with this. Understood?"

Reluctantly, Avi nodded. "Yes, Raider-Colonel."

"Avi, I need you with them. No one can read tracks like you can. You're the only hope they have of linking up with us quickly."

"Yes, Raider-Colonel."

"All right." Arad saluted his second with a stiff, crisp gesture. "For the Emperor, then."

Avi didn't reply as he rode away to assemble the funeral detail.

(' ')

Jax ended the battle for the Craggle with a sweep of his adamantium sword, lopping the head off the heretic general and sending his body over the cliff side. The body fell to the river below, and the assembled Harakoni troopers howled their approval.

"Thank you, Battle Saint!" said Colonel Setsui.

"No problem," Jax said. He had been about to shake Setsui's hand when the Warhawk officer knelt down and picked up the heretic's severed head.

Setsui drew the power sword slung across his back—a long, curved ceremonial blade—and dropped the head down the shaft, neck first. Holding the impaled head aloft, Setsui faced his regiment and called out a phrase in the home-tongue of the Harakoni. The Warhawks replied with another phrase, and all broke into another round of cheering.

"Uh huh," Jax muttered. He turned to Dimitri.

"Traditional victory ceremony," Dimitri said as a way of explanation. "This is an honor to see."

Jax frowned. "Pretty fucking gross honor if ya ask me."

"Oh, it's not that ba—"

Dimitri stopped talking when Setsui tossed the head off the sword and to the first row of soldiers. The man who caught the head stabbed it with his own combat knife, and passed it to the man next to him. As each stabbed it in turn, they dabbed some of the blood on their body armor, right above their heart.

Jax leaned over to his Equerry. "You were sayin'?"

"Nothing," Dimitri said.

"These next guys better not be this weird," Jax said.

"They aren't." Dimitri's face was very serious. "The Tallarn are all business. Nothing strange involved."

Insolyn, A Few Standard Hours Later

"Battle Saint, I am Major Sergeant Avi of the 7th Tallarn Rough Riders. I speak on behalf of Raider-Colonel Mondus Arad, who at this time is still—"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Jax cut the sergeant off, "but I'm gonna have to ask ya to stop."

"Uhm, all right."

Jax smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, son, it's nothing against you. I'm sure whatever you've got to say is real important and all. It's just that Equerry Vlasna here told me we were done seeing weird things today, and that doesn't seem to be the case."

Nearby, Dimitri shook his head. "Jax, this isn't the time—"

"He's sittin' on a fuckin' space cow!" Jax blurted.

Avi's mukaali smacked its tongue against its lips, splattering Jax's visor with saliva. The Confederate swore, and, feeling bad, the mukaali tried to wipe the spit off—with its tongue. The futile but well-intentioned gesture served only to gum up Jax's visor even more, and Avi had to pull his animal away.

"No, Horasio," he scolded. "Bad Horasio."

Dimitri blinked. "Its name is Horasio?"

"Yes," Avi replied.

There was a prolonged silence, only broken by the sound of continued tongue smacking as Horasio the mukaali savored the metallic taste Jax's polished visor had left on his tongue.

"Fine," Jax finally said. "Let's hear it, space cowboy. What's it you need from us?"

(' ')

A shell landed next to Arad, throwing shrapnel in a wide cone that tore the leg off his mukaali and pelted its torso. The animal howled and fell, crashing to the sand with a tremendous thud. Arad threw himself clear of the thrashing animal and rolled onto his stomach, lascarbine up and firing. He plucked off two kroot in a flurry burst of shots, dropping them to the rock.

A hail of kroot projectile fire roared down out of the rock formation before him, cutting down the Tallarn cavalry charge in its tracks. Mukaali howled and men shouted, some orders, others just screaming in pain. Most maddening of all, however, were the kroot that Arad's regiment had chased so far across the desert, scampering away into the rocky plateau under the cover of the rest of their xenos brethren.

Arad wanted to stand up and charge them, push his way into the tumble, and kill each and every one of the bastards with his bare hands, but that wasn't feasible. The long and short of it was that his regiment was stuck in a killzone, and that was bad.

"Raiders, pull back!" he shouted into the vox. "Pull back to the dunes and clear this killzone! Do it now!"

A lance of blue energy scythed through the air over Arad's head and he threw himself flush with the sand, keeping well away from the eight or so that followed the first.

Plasma, he realized. The kroot had sand-blasted pulse rifles…

Arad propped himself up on a knee and fired off the rest of his magazine on automatic, cooking blast after blast into the rocks. He had no clue how many, if any, kroot he hit, but he didn't care. He was angry as hell, and if shooting his clip dry made him feel better, then he would bloody well shoot his clip dry.

And then he realized what he was actually shooting, and that the plasma hadn't actually come from pulse rifles, and that the kroot had a lot more of an upper hand than just some elevation and rocky cover, and that damn that was a big sand-blasted machine, and that it was coming right toward him.

The ground shook as the Crisis suit landed, and Mondus Arad fell on his ass. Corporal Quaral rushed in on his mukaali, intent on saving his commanding officer, chainsword held up in a vain heroic gesture. The Crisis suit pivoted and gunned him down without mercy, the cyclic cannon on its arm spitting rounds faster and brighter than anything Arad had ever or would ever see again in his life. Corporal Quaral and his mukaali were ripped into strips of wet, bloodied meat that splashed the sand and covered Arad.

The Crisis suit turned and resumed firing, tearing into the rest of the regiment as it retreated over the dune. The last mukaali was limping, a kroot blade sticking from its leg. The Crisis suit killed it with a missile.

The tau were here, Arad realized. The damn tau were leading the kroot. This crusade just got a lot more interesting.

Arad gripped his power sword where it lay next to him. The way he figured it, there was a chance that he could hit an exposed leg servo or some damn thing and bring the whole contraption down.

That plan came to an end two seconds later. No sooner than Arad flicked on the blade than the Crisis suit had two plasma rifles leveled with his chest.

"Do not try," said a voice. It spoke gothic, but in a heavy, reedy accent filtered through xenos speakers. "Try and die."

"I do not fear death," Arad told it. He thought the words were rather heroic.

The Crisis suit's chest popped a seal and the pilot canopy retracted. What it revealed was a kroot warrior strapped into a seat, surrounded by screens and wires and readouts. The alien was old, as evidenced by its heavily tasseled head quills and the scores of tattoos that ran across its bare chest. Across its back it wore the cloak of an Imperial commander, and it had a tau shoulder pad strapped onto its right arm, the heathen insignia scarred by a blade.

"So you say," the alien mused, "so I hear many times from many people. So I heard from Shas'o'Nuve." The old kroot flicked a looted technoccule from its right eye and chuckled. "From him, I took this." It indicated the Crisis suit.

Arad suddenly realized he had been wrong. The tau weren't here on Insolyn, it was still just kroot. They were defectors, fleeing from their alien Greater Good with stolen equipment.

"Well, kill me if you're going to, you xenos traitor!" Arad spat.

The kroot shaper ignored him. "What will I take from you, I wonder? The blade? The cape?" It shrugged its lean shoulders. "I think not. You are good warrior. From you, I take flesh."

A blade slid forth from the Crisis suit's arm with a long _schlikt!_ and the kroot leaned its machine forward. Another arm pinned Arad's sword, crushing his hand in the process. Grunting, he railed against the press, but it did nothing. This old xenos had him dead to rights.

"Be still." The canopy retracted and the kroot disappeared to Arad. "This is great honor."

The blade moved closer.

"I make painless," said the shaper.

There was a heavy whump of armored boots hitting sand and a glowing blade cut the flaying knife in half. The shattered remains scattered into the desert wind, and the Crisis suit's head cameras swung up to look at the newcomer.

"Same here, jackass," said Fred Jax.

(' ')

The Crisis suit roared skyward on its jump jets, spraying swathes of plasma fire down at the Confederate. Jax spun his sword in a two handed grip, using the adamantium as a lightning rod to absorb the incoming attacks. He turned a full 360 degrees, slinging his sword and bringing his hands up.

For one brilliant moment, the fifty meters of air between the battlesuit and the Battle Saint was burned by a column of holy fire, and the Crisis suit was cut in half at the waist. Smoking blue fumes, the alien machine fell from the sky.

When it hit the uppermost section of the rockslide, the rest of the kroot returned fire. Jax hunkered down over Arad, taking the fullisade against his broad, neo-steel back to protect the Tallarn officer.

"You all right?" he asked, shouting over the pangs of ricocheting projectiles.

Arad tasted sand, and suddenly realized that his mouth was hanging open. Closing it to a less dumbfounded degree, he replied as calmly as he could.

"My sand-blasted arm's been crushed!"

Jax grinned at him. "But you're livin', ain't ya?"

"Barely!" Arad shouted.

"Nah, when you're barely livin's the part when you're livin' the most." Jax looked away for a moment and keyed his commlink. "Yo, Manker! Lay it on, man!"

Treads kicking sand and engines roaring, the fleet of Chimeras crested the dune behind the mukaali of the Tallarn and made a beeline for the rockslide. Lasfire and the rip-tear of the Dogs' Impalers split the atmosphere, and the kroot began to fall. As the Chimeras closed in, the Dogs let loose a flurry of rocket grenades, blowing vast swathes out of the formation and turning the granite to gravel.

The lead Chimera, housing General Manker and the Hyrkan Colonel Daubin, hit the rocks first, its front bumper crunching up against a large base stone. Daubin fell over and hit his head on an ammo box, blacking out. Manker stood proud, hefted his chainsword, and climbed out ahead of his men.

"Onward, you Dogs!" the Kriegan shouted, "To victory!"

Back on the sand, Arad looked up at the man above him. "So, you're the Battle Saint."

"Yup." Jax pulled the crippled man to his feet. Even standing, Arad still only came up to his diaphragm. "Good to meet ya."

"Raider-Colonel Mondus Arad, 7th Tallarn Rough Riders," Arad saluted.

The Battle Saint shook his head. "Not any more, Colonel. Now you're a Dog, same as everyone."

"It's an honor, your holiness."

"Sir's fine."

"Yes sir."

(' ')

Jax wasn't able to take part in the rest of the battle. In truth, he didn't have enough time. After the Dogs' arrival, the kroot resistance only lasted another seven and a half minutes as the Blackened Guard flushed them from their rocky defensive network with the generous application of high explosives and brute-force clearing tactics. General Manker led the action, and oversaw the burning of the xenos bodies after the fact.

The Dogs of War returned to Terra with the men of the 7th Rough Riders a full forty-eight hours later, giving their Battle Saint enough time to bless the buried dead of Colonel Mode's sentinel squadron and conduct the proper honor ceremonies with the campaign's command staff. A report of the ceremonies was written up by the Saint's equerry and prepared for inclusion in the next astropathic propaganda parcel, along with several picts of the event, including many involving a great deal of standing on dead aliens with weapons in the air.

The light action made for great brain junk to feed to the masses, although the ending had been something of a mistruth. As the report read, the kroot had all been annihilated in the action. Such was not entirely the case. The body of the kroot shaper, as well as several of his followers, had yet to be found, though the campaign staff wasn't worried.

After all, they certainly weren't going to search the rest of the world for a handful of aliens doomed to starvation anyway.

(' ')

As night fell, Shaper Nu'vey found himself staring at what was left of his Crisis suit. He had taken the machine many years before, in a fight with a tau commander, and it had served him well since then. Twinned in battle, Nu'vey and the battlesuit had dealt death to countless hundreds of foes, but now, their time together had passed.

He had administered the proper death rites to the warrior-heart of the machine, so that in its rebuilt state it would still retain the honor of its previous life's deeds.

Yes, the battlesuit and Nu'vey would be one again, he reasoned.

Kneeling down, he ran his finger along the warped steel where the human's blast had taken the battlesuit's waist. He could still feel the heat there, lingering even as the cold of the dusk settled in.

Leaning back, Shaper Nu'vey pulled his cloak tighter about his body and grinned as he remembered the Battle Saint's attack.

"Impressive," he muttered, and fell asleep with thoughts of the Confederate's flesh foremost on his mind.

**Author's Note: I particularly like this chapter, maybe because I spent so long proofing it that it's become engrained in my mind word-for-word. It was pretty heavily non-Dimitri centric, which I don't think is a bad thing. Arad is going to become one of the two prime secondary perspectives for some time after his introduction (the other being Kellan Thade) so I thought it was important you get to know him and his Tallarn.**

**Cavalry is an odd choice, I know, but I think it's more interesting than having everyone on foot. How their role as cavalry men will translate into using power armor is still open for debate, but I think it's pretty clear that they can't use their mukaali in a combat role anymore. Maybe hoverbikes...**

**Anyway, later.**


	43. Chapter 43: TBAL: Mordian and Mordant

The Iron Guard formed up in ranks across the Twilight Courtyard. The medals pinned to their pressed uniforms cast bright points of light around the chamber, a symptom of the harsh lumen strips that lined the ceiling. The light was absolute and near-oppressive in its uniformity, something that bothered Dimitri, but that he could nonetheless understand.

Mordia was a strange world, a planet where the word 'day' was synonymous with 'year', where one side of the planet was a scorched wreck, while the other was shrouded in an eternal night. The Mordians themselves lived on the dark side of their planet, secluded against the elements of the stagnant atmosphere within some of the largest hives outside of Terra. With the night symbolizing death, it was no wonder that the hall of the Tetrarchal Court was so extensively lit.

"Mankind fears the darkness," he muttered to himself, "and so fights it with fire."

"Philosophy, huh?" Jax asked.

They were standing on the stairs at the head of the courtyard, watching the Mordians below as they paraded through the room. Each regimental standard dipped as it passed in salute to the visiting Battle Saint, and as the traditional welcome drew on, Dimitri found himself lulled into boredom by the unending stream of soldiery. The initial novelty of the Mordians' tendency to wear dress uniforms topped by full combat gear had worn off quickly, and now he was left with his mind wondering to idle quotes.

"Yes," Dimitri replied. "Malcharion, _The Tenebrous Path_."

"Who?"

"Malcharion. He was a Night Lord before the heresy."

Jax looked down at his equerry. "The Night Lords are traitors," he said.

"Yes," Dimitri replied. "How did you know that?"

"You ain't the only one can read 'round here, Dimitri."

"No, but I am the only one with any books," he countered. "Who's been giving you things to read?"

"Valdon," Jax said. "And I don't much like hearing you quoting some heretical shitbag, so cut it the fuck out, if you please."

Dimitri frowned. "Since when were you so gung-ho about heretics and traitors, Jax?"

"Figured I'd get into the part a bit," the Confederate shrugged. "Y'know, play the game by the rules?"

"Right."

A vox system crackled across the Twilight Courtyard, and a voice belted out an order for an all stop to the regiment currently passing. The men responded immediately, snapping to a halt and spinning as one to face the steps. Dimitri magnified his view of the regimental standard, and recognized it at once.

"This is them," he said to Jax. "The Mordian 2nd Iron Guard."

"Iron Guard!" bellowed the vox system. "Kneel!"

In perfect unison born of the most intensive parade drill training in all the galaxy, all one thousand Mordians dropped to one knee and clacked their rifle butts into the tile with a resounding echo. Heads bowed till the brims of their caps touched the stocks of their rifles, they chanted as one.

"_For Mordia and the Throne, we stand with wills of iron!"_

Jax's mouth fell slack. "Uhm, all right?"

The Mordians clacked their weapons again and stood, heels together, rifles slung. One thousand hands notched off one thousand salutes, a gesture that Jax returned without hesitation.

Finally, one Mordian stepped out of the crowd of blued uniforms. He was larger than his fellows, at least by a few inches, and had more medals on his chest than any of the rest of the front row combined. He wore a sash to accommodate the weight of brass and silver that ran across his broad chest, and his clean-shaven jawline was as square as they came.

"Colonel Karl Brusak of the 2nd Iron Guard reporting as ordered, sir!"

"Knew it," Dimitri muttered as Jax stepped out alongside Manker. Dimitri made no move to follow; Jax knew what to do.

"I am the Battle Saint," he started, "And I welcome you all to the Dogs of War."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 43: To Build a Legion: Part 4: Mordian and Mordant_

The Cadians had been on Terra for three weeks.

Three weeks of armor orientation, early morning drills, firing practice, weapons orientation, field maintenance drills, prayer services, unit coordination drills, commlink code memorization, and command briefings.

Three weeks of late-night poker games, jokes amongst friends, drinking, fraternizing with the hired help, and learning to shave in horribly inaccurate power gloves.

That last exercise had been Thade's idea, and as he watched his regiment form up on the assembly deck with cut cheeks, he couldn't help but smile. Dexterity training, the Equerry had said. The men needed dexterity training, so Thade gave it to them. What better motivator for learning precise hand movements in power armor than promising death with failure? One slip and the juggler would split.

Absently, Thade ran a hand down his own cheek, where a scar was already puckering up. The 'lead by example' mantra had its downsides, to be sure.

"Colonel?"

Thade turned to see Hale marching up in his dark green warplate. Even clad in his Dog armor, the whiteshield was only tall enough to reach Thade's shoulder, something the colonel knew Hale was sensitive about. The lad would take no jokes about it, either, and wore enough blades to make it stick, with a chainsword on his hip and a combat knife on his chest and shin each.

"Hale," Thade greeted, saluting.

The Dogs had brought back the classic fist-to-chest Terran salute amongst their ranks. Like the cross-visor, this was yet another throwback to the days of the Emperor's Great Crusade, engineered by their great leader. Whether that leader meant the Battle Saint or his equerry, Thade still didn't know.

"How are you feeling?" Thade asked.

Hale's eyes were cold, or, at least Thade was sure Hale thought they were cold. Sometimes, the kid took to his teenaged warrior schtick a little too much.

"Ready," Hale said.

"I can see that." Thade indicated the reams of extra magazines that lined Hale's armor, stuck in combat webbing stretched across his shoulder pads, chestguard, and around both his forearms. "You seem a little loaded down."

"At least I don't have a hellgun strapped to my back."

"We've all kept our hellguns as back-up. With these suits' fusion packs, we'll never run out of ammunition for them." Thade lowered his voice. "It was also a standing order. Mind explaining why you opted to ignore it?"

"Already have a back-up," Hale replied, pulling his flak pistol.

"I'm not going to argue this with you. We get done here, you're getting a hellgun."

Hale didn't respond, physically or verbally, and Thade turned back to the assembly deck as the Valkyries angled in from the air outside. The dropships set down and the Cadians boarded them, denting running boards with their heavy boots.

Thade swung up into the command craft alongside Hale and clicked his comm. live. "Colonel Kellan Thade, here. Who's in charge of this wing?"

"I am, sir," replied a voice. "Major Prescott, sir, Holy Terra's 1st Flyers ready to serve."

Thade nodded. "Copy, Prescott. Take us to the target."

(' ')

_Fshwambamfamf!_

The smell of ozone dissipated with the glow, and Dimitri blinked himself straight in the aftermath of the teleportation. Next to him, Colonel Brusak looked pale in the face, and Dimitri was sure it wasn't due just to the lack of light on his world.

"You get used to it," he said, then added, "If you're lucky."

Brusak nodded. He looked like he would have done more if it weren't for his stomach trying to push its way into his throat. He swallowed the bile, and Dimitri had to resist his own gag reflex.

Nearby, Jax was shouting and waving. "Castarius, Setsui! Come meet the new guys!"

The Techmarine and Harakoni officer crossed the assembly field to the arrival zone just as Brusak came out of his funk and began to look around. His eyes were wide in what Dimitri had named 'the Terra Stare'. In almost a month of receiving and training new soldiers, he had seen the look quite a few times: slack jaw, wide eyes, tears.

"Mr. Vlasna," Setsui said with a nod. "Good to see you, very good."

"Setsui," Dimitri replied. "I see you've added more." He indicated the colonel's armor.

"Yes, yes, lots." Setsui's grin never left his face as he showed off the newest additions to his hand painted armor-symbols, explaining each in turn.

The converted Warhawks' CMC armor was lighter in stature than the rest, and more suited to rapid movement and air assaults. In keeping with that, their suits were painted in ragged bands of earthen green and sky blue. Painting symbols in the pict-language of their culture was tradition for the Harakoni, and many of the white runes dotted not just Setsui's armor, but the armor of all his colleagues.

"And this is the Hunter's Wind," Setsui finished, pointing to a rune across his chestplate, "to give me good fortune and prevailing winds."

Castarius cleared his throat, cutting the Harakoni off, and handed Dimitri a dataslate. "The projections you wanted for those hoverbikes, based on partial blueprints and the Battle Saint's specifications."

Dimitri scanned the slate. "Castarius, these are all feasible."

"Yes."

"I mentioned this yesterday and you're already building prototypes?"

"I am a Techmarine."

"Don't you sleep?"

"No."

There was a moment of silence on the arrival pad. Setsui took a full step away from Castarius.

"All right, let's take a look-see," Jax said, slipping in and taking the slate. He glanced at it, and his eyes went wide. "Sweet pickles, Castarius, these are the exact specs! Damn good work, man!"

"Thank you, Battle Saint." Castarius took the slate back with a servo-clamp. "I've taken the liberty of scheduling an orientation with Raider-Colonel Arad and his command staff for this afternoon. Is that acceptable, Equerry?"

Dimitri double-checked the schedule on his visor and nodded. "Yes, he's free."

"Good. I've stationed a reactor conduit in the floor below us. If you wish to make your appointment on Mordant, you will have to utilize it within the next four minutes." Castarius looked to Brusak. "Colonel, form up your men and follow me for armor and bunk orientation."

Brusak grunted and straightened his uniform. "Yes. Iron Guard, forward!"

As Castarius and the Mordians moved away, Jax turned to Dimitri. "You know, these specs are right on."

"Yes," Dimitri agreed. "A few more adjustments and we'll have exact copies of your…what were they?"

"Vultures," Jax said.

"Oh!" Setsui cut in, turning and awkwardly pointing to the markings across his shoulder blades, "The symbol of the vulture is here, yeah?"

Dimitri shook his head.

(' ')

Thade's Valkyries moved down over the lowest point of the Meditar Hive Quadpoint, thrusters churning the clouds of organic back-feed coming off the arterial trough. Thanks to the isolation of his audio pickups, Thade could hear the wailing of the population past the engine roar. It chilled him.

"What the hell is this?" Hale complained. The Whiteshield was fanning the cloying smog with his hand as he sided up next to Thade.

"Food."

"What?"

"Food," Thade repeated. "Most of Terra's lower class lives off of genic cereals fed to them through these vast troughs."

Hale made a sour face. "Just what is it, exactly?"

"A proto-sludge," Thade replied. "Every so often, the cellular structure of the cereals mutates and turns into an inedible paste. From there, disease spreads out from the troughs, and riots break out."

"And we're here to put down the riot," Hale finished. "Well, I guess it's something to do."

"No. Were it that simple, I'd be happy." Thade grabbed the high-tension rappel line and attached it to his armor's combat harness. "We're here to purge the whole area: rioters, diseased, everyone."

Hale was about to speak again when Thade dropped from the bay, slipping down into the murk and out of sight. Around the Whiteshield, the rest of 1st Squad was doing the same, each one grim-faced as they slammed their visors down and disembarked.

"Welcome to Terra," Hale grumbled, attaching his own line. A moment later and he was in the thick of it.

(' ')

Thade started killing the moment his boots hit rockcrete, and as he waded forward into the mob, shoulder-to-shoulder with the other men in his company, he learned just what an effective group of killers his men had become. They fired without error. Spikes downed rioters with brutal efficiency. Men fell in droves, some without heads, some speared together.

The entire situation was a slaughter, as ignoble and devoid of honor as any action he had ever been involved with. As a Cadian, Thade had thought he'd seen the worst of the worst: daemons, traitors—the scum of creation. Now confronted with the mass killing of his fellow man, he realized he had been wrong.

A starving man rushed Thade with a knife. The notion was as insane as it was futile, and Thade desperately wished the man would just give up. The knife collided with his chestplate and Thade fired at point blank range. The spike caught the man in the face and sprayed his head across the street.

"Shit," Thade muttered.

"Sir?" Hale asked. Thade looked to his left and saw the younger man laying into the rioters right alongside him. Hale's armor was spattered with gore, and Thade realized the kid was using his chainsword.

"But that damn thing away!" Thade shouted.

Hale stopped mid-stroke. "What for?"

"These are men you're killing, damnit! Innocents!" Thade grabbed Hale by the wrist and forced the whirring blade down. "The only thing they're guilty of is starving."

"They're rabid," Hale protested. "They're no more than dogs now, sir."

Thade laughed without humor. Hale stared at him, not realizing the irony of his own words.

"Then put them down like you would a dog, Hale," Thade replied. "Have some respect, and don't make it so messy."

With that, Thade turned back to the fight, ordering individual platoons to move down specific thoroughfares to establish a quarantine line. He had to establish boundaries for the engagement, lest he wind up killing his way through the entire hive structure.

Hale watched him go and, reluctantly, sheathed his chainsword. The colonel did have a point, he supposed. After all, who would use a chainsword with this much killing to go around?

(' ')

Two kilometers away, slogging through the mud and grime along the bank of the trough itself, Colonel Hawke pulled his chainsword from the gut of a hiver and kicked the body into the murk of the water. The blight bacteria began dissolving the body immediately, and Hawke made it a point to remind his men to stay clear of the brackish water.

He moved on alongside his command squad, hacking his way down the bank. The tanned armor of his Armageddon-born Dogs moved with him, one thousand of them on both sides of the river. Bodies strewn out behind them, the Dogs of 2nd Company began to push the diseased rioters away from the trough and into the lines of 1st Company's Cadians.

Hawke activated his commlink. "2nd, 1st."

"This is 1st," replied the voice of Colonel Thade. "Go ahead, Hawke."

"My men are herding the hostiles into your lines. Banks will be cleared within the hour."

There was a pause on the other end. When Thade finally did speak, he sounded tired. "Copy that, 2nd. The Emperor protects."

"The Emperor—" Hawke was cut off by a burst of static as Thade closed the line, and he stopped speaking.

Hawke hadn't gotten to know Thade well yet, as both men had been concentrated on training their respective contingents, but Hawke was certain the Cadian seemed uneasy, though he couldn't see why. They were doing the Battle Saint's work, cleansing Holy Terra of a blemish. There was no reason to feel disturbed.

Colonel Hawke's Dogs of War continued their assault. In the next hour, they would kill over seven thousand hostiles, with no casualties of their own. That death tally, more than any other factor, would serve to alienate Hawke forever from the other colonels, and firmly establish the nickname that would follow him for the rest of his life.

Hive Primaris, Planet Mordant

"The men and women of Mordant have long held a reputation as ferocious fighters and devoted servants of the God-Emperor of Mankind. This, twinned with your unique abilities as renowned tunnel fighters, makes it my honor to invite you into the ranks of the Dogs of War."

Major Ana Tyryr rolled her eyes and lit another cigarette. Next to her, Sergeant Fallar nudged her in the shoulder.

"Speeches not your thing, boss?"

"Why should I be impressed?" Tyryr nodded at the Battle Saint where he stood at the front of the assembly area. "He's reading off a prompt. I could read off a prompt."

"How can you tell?" Fallar was staring at her cigarette.

Tyryr handed him the pack and lighter. "His rhythm," she said. "Nothing says reading aloud like those pauses."

Fallar nodded. Tyryr's ear for accents was renowned throughout the regiment, almost as much as her skill with a lasgun. It was the latter skill and her status as a well-liked noncom that got her promoted from the sergeants to the major rank she enjoyed now, even if Tyryr wasn't totally comfortable with the title yet. After all, she still stood back with Fallar instead of alongside the colonel.

"Can you place his accent?" Fallar handed her back the smokes, taking a drag on his own.

"No," she replied. "I've never heard it before. It sounds weird, but I'll bet my bayonet it's worse in private. He's covering it."

"Hmm," Fallar said, hoping his face looked pondering enough. He was trying desperately to not look at Tyryr's shirt, but she just wore such low-cut fatigues, and she wasn't even wearing her flak armor…

"Darv, you're gawking again," she said.

Shit. "I was thinking!"

Tyryr smiled and patted him on the shoulder. "I'd better go, then. I'm sure Mond wants me at hand for the personal greetings."

"Oh, right." Think, stupid! Words! "Um, thanks for the smoke!"

Tyryr waved at him absently and started through the press of assembled troopers. Now alone, Fallar cursed himself.

Thanks for the smoke? Fallar smacked himself on the helmet.

Smooth, Darv. Real damn smooth.

(' ')

Colonel Mond of the Mordant Acid Dogs was a pristine man, quite at odds with the rag-tag appearance of his regiment. For one thing, his hair was black. Just black. Not black and blonde, not black and purple, not green and blue, but just black. Amongst the Mordant soldiery, most of whom were enlisted as either penance for criminal activity or to get out of the underhive slums of their homeworld, this made Mond stand out.

His uniform was clean, trim, and pressed. His helmet was on straight and the chinstrap was cinched to stay. The lasgun slung tight to his shoulder was polished to a shine, and as he shook Dimitri's armored hand, he did so with clean, black gloves.

Mond's soldiers were the exact opposite. Their flak armor was either lightened or gone entirely, and their weapons were hanging limp. Few of them wore helmets, and those that did seemed to do so as an afterthought. They stood at a mockery of attention, and talked amongst each other as the greeting ceremonies went on.

"Equerry Vlasna, it is an honor to meet you," Mond said. "I've read all your bulletins."

Dimitri smiled. His cross-visor helmet was latched to his hip, and he hoped the colonel didn't realize how awkward he felt.

"I'm honored, Colonel. Are you actually from Mordant?"

Mond shook his head. "No sir, I'm Cadian, born and bred."

Next to Dimitri, Manker made a derisive snorting noise and rolled his eyes. Mond looked at the general, ready to speak. Dimitri cut him off.

"Please, Colonel, pardon my confusion, but, how does that happen?"

"The Mordant are good fighters, certainly, but they can't focus their energies." Mond gestured to the troops behind him. "They're ferocious tunnelers, but they're a rowdy bunch and not inclined to using sound tactics."

"Yes, the greater elements of the Guard do like to keep their eye on us bothersome Mordant." A woman pushed her way out of the soldiers and onto the stage.

"Major Tyryr, you're late," said Mond.

"My apologies, Colonel," she replied. "I was busy with more important things."

"Like what?"

The major raised her voice to be heard by all present. "Taking a crap!"

The soldiers laughed and Dimitri watched Colonel Mond's face redden. Jax, who had until this point been sifting through a platter of finger food with Menshaw, turned to see what was happening. When he saw Tyryr, his eyebrows shot up and he suddenly wanted to engage in the conversation.

"Hey, Dimitri, who's this?" he asked, shouldering into the group.

"Major Tyryr," Dimitri replied. "Second in command, I'm guessing?"

Mond nodded. "Yes, Ana's a real hit with the troops."

"That's not hard," Tyryr said. "They just like one of their own."

Jax stuck out his hand and shook with her. "Good to meet you, Major. I'm sure you'll fit right in with the rest of the Dogs."

"Right." Tyryr pulled away from the Battle Saint and looked at Dimitri. "So, who're you?"

"Dimitri Vlasna, Equerry to the Battle Saint."

"Wow. Rehearse much?"

"That would imply that I need practice." Dimitri's eyes narrowed. Somehow, he had taken an immediate dislike to Ana Tyryr. "I don't."

Tyryr seemed like she was going to speak further, but soon found herself silenced as a bigger, blackened form filled her vision.

"Major Tyryr, it is considered common courtesy to stand at attention when facing a superior officer or Ecclesiarchy official." Manker was laying on the seriousness thicker than Dimitri had ever heard him. "The Battle Saint is both. Perhaps it would be good practice for your troops to do the same."

The major turned with reluctance and belted an order to the regiment. At once, the Mordant snapped to attention, and Tyryr turned back to salute the Battle Saint.

Jax leaned over. "Manker, that weren't—"

"I am overall military commander of the Dogs of War Legion, and I will not have discipline lacking in those under my purview," Manker snapped. He fixed his glare on Tyryr. "You, Major, will be under my closest scrutiny from now until you prove yourself as an asset to this legion and to the Imperium of Man. If you fail in any capacity, or if those under your command fail likewise, I will not hesitate to kill you where you stand."

"Yes, sir."

Manker looked to Mond. "I am Kriegan, born and bred. I must already put up with a full company of Cadians, and I will not suffer the command of another. You, sir, are fired."

Mond looked ready to cry in an instant. "Why—"

"Manker," Dimitri cut in. "Maybe you ought to think this through."

"I have. I thought this through when I was first given the troop assignments three weeks ago. All that was needed was confirmation of his failings." Manker gestured to the Mordant in general. "Their informality is all the confirmation I need, and if you truly dislike my course of action, then you and the Battle Saint reserve the right to overrule it."

Dimitri looked up at Jax. "I'm really fine with it."

"Yeah," Jax said, speaking around a grime fruit, "give him the boot."

"No!" Mond shouted. "I've waited so long—"

"Colonel Mond, you are hereby relieved of your duties as commanding officer of the Mordant 63rd Acid Dogs. Transfer papers are in order, and you are to be relegated to an infantry command amidst the troops of the Pegasus Crusade under Warmaster Slavere." Manker cracked a thin smile as he handed over the sheaf of papers. "He's a Cadian, too. You should have great fun."

Mond took the papers and, with little more than a glare in Dimitri's direction, left the staging area. Afterward, things were silent for a moment.

Dimitri spoke up. "Ready?"

Jax nodded and set his food aside. He clapped his hands together and started rubbing his palms. A white light began to build.

Manker looked at the woman in front of him. "Colonel Tyryr, are your soldiers prepared for departure?"

"Yes." Tyryr looked dumbfounded as she replied. "How are we leaving?"

Manker's smirk grew with the building whine of imminent teleportation. If Dimitri hadn't known better, he would have thought the Kriegan general a sadist.

"You'll see," he said.

Hair stood on end and noses scrunched as the stench of ozone filled the air. The whine reached its highest pitch, and Dimitri closed his eyes.

_Fshwambamfamf!_

Dogs' Spire, Terra

Thade stood in the washroom. The tile around his boots was pummeled from the idle steps of his armored feet, and the water running across his green warplate washed away the blood of the three-hour fight. Pulling his helmet off, Thade let the water run through his hair and carry away the sweat and oil grease. He looked up into the shower head array and felt the heat on his face. His Impaler lay below him, chamber jammed open. Its barrel was still hot, and it steamed in the moist chamber.

The door to the washroom opened and another Dog entered. "Colonel?"

"Hale, I'm not in the mood," Thade growled.

Hale walked past Thade and leaned on the wall. His armor was spattered, and blood washed off him in waves. The ammo webbing on his body began to sag from the water, but he showed no signs of leaving.

Neither man spoke for a long moment.

"So, you didn't see a problem with that?" Thade asked.

"No," Hale replied.

Thade sighed. "Kid, look—"

"No, Colonel, you look." Hale pried off his helmet, and Thade realized the cold look in his eyes before had been real. "They call me the Teenaged Hero of Vallock, but they don't understand what happened there. I spent a full month in that city, by myself. I killed, I scavenged, and when I ran out of rations, I ate the dead to stay alive. I almost died there, Thade.

"The point is, I don't care about those people we just killed. What we just did was a mercy, because I've been where they were, and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy."

Hale left the washroom the way he had come in, leaving Thade alone in the running water.

**Author's Note: I don't think this chapter was as good as 42, but oh well. I'm lucky to have gotten this much done with the way finals are trying to hump my face off.**

**Yeah, I don't have much else to say. Everything's on scheduale. Now, I've got to go update _Brain Dead_ and hopefully _Green is Best_. Might have another _Iron Knight _up tomorrow, but we'll see.**

**And if you don't read any of those, then ignore all that and just tell me what you thought of the above chapter.**

**Later.**


	44. Chapter 44: TBAL: Home for the Holidays

"Comrades of Terrax, salute your Battle Saint!"

The heavy-set commissar's order was followed immediately, and all thousand of the Terraxian troopers snapped to attention. All of them wore garb similar to their commanding political officer, right down to the peaked cap, and as they moved in unison it became hard to tell them apart.

Except for the one who lagged in his salute, completing the motion just a second after his fellows.

"Fool!" boomed the commissar. His thick accent slurred the word, and it sounded more like 'fewl'. "Step forward and face your failure!"

The Terraxian did as he was told. He stepped to the front of the line and puffed his chest up, ready for his punishment.

The commissar shot him through the heart, the echo of the las discharge echoing away into the courtyard.

Dimitri's eyes went wide.

Jax spoke. "That's fucking stupid."

"I'll say."

"These people are fucking stupid."

"Agreed."

"We're fucking leaving."

"Fine by me."

The commissar in charge turned from his assembled troops, ready to make a speech about how tight discipline was maintained in Terraxian units, but the Battle Saint and company were gone. All that remained was a fizzle in the air and the smell of ozone.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 44: To Build a Legion: Part 5: Home for the Holidays_

The Afrikaneer wasteland was vast and empty, a continental plain of hardpacked glass-soil accumulated over ten thousand years of waste dumping. Dunes of radioactive slag dotted the landscape, ranging from a few meters in the flattest reaches to variable mountains in the distance. The world here was quiet; even the wind was staunched by the oppressiveness of the atmosphere.

A line of targets stood upon a dune peak, plastek constructs built in the proportions of men the size of Astartes. The dummies aimed flakboard bolters downrange, silhouetted by the rising sun.

Hoverbikes, eighty of them in total, whipped past the dummies, and as they passed, the targets came apart in a hail of spikes.

Raider-Colonel Mondus Arad throttled down his vulture and slid into a turn, dropping his altitude to dig into the ground with his boot and pivot more easily. When he had come fully about, he pulled his foot back into the stirrup and gunned the throttle. The vulture's engine, a fusion-powered anti-grav turbine, kicked up three gears, and hurled Arad across the open area.

"Raiders, with me. Synch your advance and pull blades."

Along the line of vultures, the Tallarn Dogs clamped their Impalers to their saddle-locks and drew their melee weapons: chainswords and gladiuses. Arad drew his power falx and span it in his palm, the crackling energy stabilizing along its curved blade. Ahead, the targets on the dune turned, buried gears rotating them.

Arad hit the line before the rest of his men, lancing by at 150kph. Behind him, the largest of the dummies fell to the side, its head rolling down the dune. The rest of the platoon whipped by after him, and the dummies fell completely.

Arad came to a halt in front of the company rally point, half a mile from the target dune. His vulture skidded in the dust and came down on its belly with a whump and he disembarked, pulling off his cross-visor helm and mounting it on the back of his saddle.

"Verdict, sir?"

Arad turned to see Major Sergeant Avi approaching from the command transport where he had been overseeing the unloading of the rest of 4th Company's vultures. Like Arad, Major Sergeant Avi's power armor was a dry tan. Unlike Arad, Avi wore the standard sand-tone desert cloak. Arad's was a silken blue, the mark of his sultan bloodline.

"The bikes are quick and handle well, Avi," replied the Raider-Colonel. He sheathed his falx and smiled. "Quicker than the Astartes bikes, I'll wager. Tighter turning, too."

"I wouldn't voice that to Castarius," Avi muttered.

"Where is the Techound, anyway? I should think he'd be here for the testing of his own adaptation."

Avi shook his head. "He stayed behind. Something about testing with 3rd Company."

Arad's eyebrows shot up. "The Harakoni? What's he need with Setsui's lot?"

"No idea, sir."

Avi stepped up next to Arad's bike and rested a hand on its forked prow, were the weapon mount had yet to be filled. The engine output was still being tested with varying caliber las-weapons to determine just what it could and could not fuel. In the end, Avi guessed that the Tallarn bikes would carry a variety of nose weapons.

"Must be important," Arad muttered. He looked north, in the vague direction of the Imperial Palace. "Hope it isn't something useless."

* * *

"Engaging primary thrusters," Castarius sounded and flicked a toggle on his control slate.

The jump pack fired and Colonel Setsui was airborne, roaring above the deck on a wash of flame. The only thing holding him in were the chains attached to his armor, and even those were struggling under the force.

The Harakoni officer giggled something upbeat and vulgar. Castarius ignored him and pulled back on the output, bringing Setsui to a calmer hover.

"Bringing spinal receptor controls online. Control established, Colonel?"

"I feel like my spine's crawling!"

"Control established." Castarius marked off a dataslate. "Restraints disengaged. Try moving about."

Setsui nodded. At his command, the nozzles of his new jump pack nosed him toward Castarius, then away, then to the side. He moved easily and without touching the ground or any other obstacles in the messy workplace. Thanks to the direct mental link between himself and the suit, the task became instant second-nature.

"Try altitude," Castarius said. Setsui raised himself into the rafters. "Now come back down." Setsui drifted down to within an inch of the deck.

"Good," Castarius said. "Now power down."

Setsui looked up. High above in the rafters of the workshop, a skylight had been opened to allow the backwash a way out. The Harakoni colonel smiled.

"Sorry, friend, but on Harakon we have a saying: one must fly before he can walk."

Castarius reached for him, but it was too late. Setsui blasted out of his grasp and into the morning air, the roar of his Reaper-pattern jump pack echoing across the tower grounds.

* * *

Dimitri looked up as the teleportation dissipated to see a figure in power armor flying through the pillars of the assembly field. The Dog hopped from one to another, pushing off and boosting to the next.

"Jump pack seems to be working," Dimitri said, looking over at Jax.

The Confederate's visor was down, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet. "Reaper," he said.

"What?"

"Nothing," Jax replied. "I just hadn't seen a reaper in years, is all. Kinda feels funny in a way."

The Dog fell from the sky right for the arriving retinue. At the last minute, he turned mid-air and stabilized into a soft landing with a whoosh of outpouring thrusters.

"Ah, hello, hello again," he said, pulling off his helmet. It was Setsui. "How are things on Terrax planet?"

"Shitty," Jax replied. "You're pretty good with that."

"Thank you." Setsui grinned and patted one of the two colossal thrusters emerging from his back. "Yes, new best friend, this pack. My company will know them well by the end of the week. We will be your Reapers."

"How did you—"

Setsui tapped ear. "Commlink."

"What?" Jax paused as he looked at his visor. "Son of a bitch."

Setsui laughed. "Good thing I'm friendly, eh?"

"Yeah," Jax sighed. "Shouldn't you go do something?"

As Setsui flew away, ascending the vertical reaches of the tower's exterior one balcony and gutter at a time, Dimitri looked to Jax. "We don't have to meet the Zuven people until tomorrow. What do you want to do till then?"

"Take a break. I'm fucking beat."

"Break it is, then." Dimitri looked to the rest of the command squad. "R&R period until 0500 standard tomorrow morning. Clear?"

"Clear," they chorused.

"Good. Fall out."

* * *

Yevina Cardigan crawled from her armor and into the bathtub. As one of the few civilians in the Dogs' Spire, Yevina enjoyed the service of a personal housekeeping servitor, and as such her bath was already filled and warm when she disrobed her two-ton garment of neo-steel and servos.

She slid in and leaned back, letting out a contented sigh. The servitor stared at her.

"You can leave," she said.

It did, and Yevina Cardigan closed her eyes. This, and a nice book later on, would be her R&R.

* * *

Animal Mother ducked and lashed out, his Catachan Fang finding purchase in the servitor's chest. The automaton was a combat model, built of stern synth-flesh swathed in flak-plate, but that still wasn't enough. The Fang cut through all that and burst the servitor's heart, and it keeled over on its own.

"Damn," the Catachan muttered. He hadn't meant to do that.

"Looks like you had a problem, there."

Animal turned to see one of the newer Dogs approaching. Like Animal, he was decked in his CMC plate, but neither had the same coloring.

"A little," Animal admitted. "Who are you?"

The man stepped into the training pit and offered his hand. "Sergeant Darv Fallar, Acid Dogs. Erm, 6th Company, I mean." He laughed a little. "Sorry, still getting used to the titles."

Animal nodded. 6th Company was the Mordant soldiery, the 'Acid Dogs' as they had been known as a part of the mainstream Imperial Guard. As far as Animal knew, they still used the title as a company moniker.

Fallar's armor was heavily informal. Like the rest of his unit, the paint scheme was patchwork at best, made of dirty, earth-tone paint sprays that came together as a mottled mockery of natural camouflage.

Or perfect urban camo, Animal realized.

"Sergeant Casey." He shook the Mordant's hand. "Most call me Animal Mother."

"What for?"

Animal cocked his head to one side. "Beats the hell out of me. Just stuck, I guess."

"Fair enough." Fallar pointed at the Fang. "That's a nice knife. You're Catachan, right?"

"Yes. And you?"

"I'm from Mordant."

"I meant about your knife."

"Oh, oh, yes, right." Fallar reached into the leather sheath strapped to his shin and pulled out a hilt. He flicked his wrist and a blade the length of his forearm snapped out. "Mordant combi-switch."

Animal grinned. "That's cute."

"Oh yeah? You want to spar on that, Catachan?"

"Absolutely."

This, and a night of drinking to commemorate the day when Fallar's blade broke, would be their R&R.

* * *

General Harken Manker looked up as the door to his chambers opened. "Colonel," he said.

Colonel Hawke of 2nd Company saluted. "General Manker."

"Please, enter," Manker replied.

Hawke stepped down the short flight of entry stairs in the foyer and into the living room. Manker had converted the room into a kind of headquarters, complete with tactica control table. Charts and books lay scattered across tables, and a long couch was littered with dataslates. A servitor stood at a side table, parchment spread out before it. An auto-quill hovered above the page, and the servitor's glazy eyes were fixed on Manker.

"I'm in the middle of revising standard doctrine." Manker gestured to the servitor, then to the old papers on a table. "I wanted you here to get an officer's opinion on some of the changes."

"Officer's opinion, sir?"

"Yes, Colonel. Most of the other company commanders are either informal or specialists, and aside from your company, the only straight infantry contingent of any renown is 1st Company." Manker looked at Hawke, his hooded eyes shadowy in the low light. "But I'm not about to adjust any policy because of some damn Cadian."

"Yes, sir."

Manker straightened up from the table and stuck out his hand. "Glad we see the same way, Hawke."

Their gauntlets smacked together with a pang.

"I read your report on the riots," Manker said. "Impressive work."

"Thank you, sir."

"I've also read it earned you a nickname amongst the troops."

Hawke nodded. "Yes, sir."

"What is it?"

"Bloody, sir. Bloody Hawke."

Manker laughed dryly. "Well, it adds character."

"Have you heard yours, sir?" Hawke asked.

"Mine?"

"Yes. The Mordant have started calling you 'Hard-ass Harken'." Hawke smiled thinly. "I think its taking hold in the rest of the companies, sir."

Manker nodded. "Yes, the Mordant are popular now. Must be the women in their ranks."

"Maybe, sir."

"In any case, I won't try and quell it. Doing so would be futile." Manker moved back to his table. "Besides, I think I like it."

With that, they began their work on the doctrinal changes. They would do so until early the next morning, when they got back to their other duties. The servitor would starve to death about then. This would be their R&R.

* * *

The Dogs' Den occupied the second highest floor of the spire, and was the only place on the continent that served alcoholic beverages. The Den was the brainchild of Heron Fife, an entrepreneur who saw through the haze of propaganda proclaiming the Dogs as consummate professionals and realized they were soldiers like any other. He petitioned the Legion's public relations officer—Dimitri Vlasna—and obtained license to set up an establishment within the spire itself.

Fife ran the place himself, and could be found behind the bar. That's where Thade found him this night, running a rag stereotypically across the hardwood bar top.

"Evening, Colonel," he said. "Can I get ya anything? Whole new stock just in from Cadia."

"Really?" Thade said, taking a seat. The bar stools were built to withstand the weight of his power armor, a necessary precaution considering the legion-wide mandate that each Dog had to spend 12 hours in armor every day. It still creaked when he moved.

Fife nodded. He was a pudgy man, and the action made his chin swag. "Yep. The taste of home, according to one of your men."

"Which one?" Thade asked.

"The young one. Hale, I think it was. Why are you sighing, Colonel?"

"No reason. I'll have a bottle."

Fife went off to get the drink and Thade rested his arms on the bar top, drumming his fingers on the wood. He looked around the Den. As he'd entered, there had been a few enlisted Dogs chatting at the bar. Now they had moved away to a corner table, giving him the bar. Judging by their armor, they were all Tallarn except for one Mordant.

Thade waved to them. One or two waved back.

"Here you are." Fife had returned and set the bottle down in front of him. "You need an opener?" he asked.

Thade flexed his glove, and the servos whined. "Don't think so."

He popped the cap with a thumb and took a long drink. Swallowing, he held the bottle up to the light. "The Lord Castellan's Own," he read aloud. "You weren't jerking me around, Fife."

"Only the best for you boys."

"Right," said a voice. "I'll believe that when you start serving drinks in here."

Fife's eyebrows shot up. "Well, good evening, Colonel Tyryr."

"Hey, Heron," said the Mordant officer. "Would you mind getting me the usual?"

"One minute." The bartender disappeared into the back.

Thade looked over at his fellow company commander. She, like he, was armored up, but in the mismatch camo-splotch pattern the Mordant soldiery favored. The helmet she set on the bar had a blood-red rune splashed across the temple, probably some kind of gang-mark.

"Have we met?" Thade asked.

"No. Do we really need to?" Tyryr leaned back on her stool and waved to the group of soldiers at the back. They all waved back, and Tyryr smiled. "I mean, really Colonel, I'm not a big Cadian fan."

"Not many in this Legion are, ma'am."

Tyryr looked right at him. "No, really, my old CO was a Cadian, and I hated his staunchy ass."

"We aren't all alike, you know."

Tyryr raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Really."

"Alright. In a minute I'm going to go over and talk with those soldiers, and probably have a drink with them. What do you think of that?"

"I think that's a very inappropriate…" Thade stopped himself.

Tyryr snorted. "Way to command? Well, for not being exactly like the rest of your violet-eyed kin, you've got a funny way of showing it." Fife returned and handed her the drink she'd ordered. "Have a good evening, Colonel Thade. Fife."

"Ma'am," Fife replied as she walked away. Thade watched her go.

"That is one strange woman," he muttered, taking a final sip from his bottle. "What was she drinking?"

"Meric Lite."

"What?"

"Hiver beer, native to Terra," Fife smiled. "Lot of working men sink their paychecks into it. Why, you want one?"

"Yeah, why not?"

Thade drank one, and then another, and then another. By his tenth, he agreed that it was a pretty tasty beverage. That, and a hangover in the morning, would be his R&R.

* * *

Menshaw marched down the corridor and checked the wall thermometer with a curse.

"What?" Sternev called from the head of the hallway.

They were at the top of the spire, in the hallway running from the lifts to the entrance to the Battle Saint's chambers. The hall was huge, lined with support colonnades running twelve or more meters from floor to ceiling. Each of the pillars sported heating and cooling vents built into their bases, heating vents that for the past half an hour had been pissing Menshaw off to no end.

"Damn temp's gone up again!" he shouted back.

"I can't feel it none, Chief!"

Menshaw looked back at Sternev with a 'seriously?' face. "You've got your helmet on, you twit."

"So what?" Sternev shot back. "Maybe you ought to do the same, eh? Keep you from getting too hot."

Menshaw muttered something about a gakking idiot and turned back to the control panel. He tapped out a temperature command with his stubby fingers, but nothing was registering. He mashed the 'clear' button and tried again, but to no avail.

"Gakking piece of—" Menshaw slammed his boot into the column. The roar of the heater shut off. "There!"

"Good work, Chief."

"Don't patronize me!"

The lift doors slid open and the floor shook with the tread of the new arrival. Menshaw looked up from the pillar and nodded in greeting. "Hey, Tarrius."

"**Greetings, Menshaw,"** boomed the Dreadnaught. **"Am I very late?"**

"Not really, no."

"Chief was just fussing with the heating controls again!"

"Sternev!"

Tarrius chuckled. It sounded like a tank tread hitting a metal grate. **"Very good. Shall we?"**

"Sure."

Menshaw and Tarrius marched back to the end of the hall, where Sternev was setting up the table. Tarrius relaxed down on his leg pistons, managing to lower his gigantic carriage down to a reasonable level with the two ratlings.

"So, what is it tonight?" Menshaw asked.

"Strip Solon Naked," Sternev replied, dealing out the deck with a deftness only a ratling could achieve. "Five card start on everyone, minimum four-crown pool. Sound good?"

"Yeah."

"**Aye."** A metal arm extended from Tarrius's front and gripped his cards, holding them up to one of his external picters. **"Now then, have at thee."**

This, interspaced with eleven more instances of cursing and abusing on the heater controls, would be the trio's R&R.

* * *

Jax rolled over in his sleep, the springs of the bed groaning under his two-ton weight. His suit, though on low power, still emitted fusion burn from the exhaust vents on his back, and the silken bed sheets smoldered quietly in the dark. The window panes vibrated with the sound of his snoring, and his thick boots dangled off the end of the mattress. This was his R&R.

* * *

The Imperial Library occupied the entirety of an island just north of the continental Imperial Palace. Its spires loomed out of the brackish northern sea, and clouds of pollution had stained its golden façades with soot over the millennia. Still, it held fast as a perpetual storm wracked its walls, the oceanic spray washing up the sloped sides with each gust of wind.

Inside, the kilometer-long chambers were silent. Attendees, servitors and sentient adepts alike, stalked the halls, checking tomes and shelves in a constant but vain attempt to bring absolute order to this sub-continent of knowledge. Railcars zipped by on a super-structure of magnetic rails, ferrying visitors to specific areas of interest.

Toward the middle of the library, one such railcar came to a stop in a clearing. Lit by lumen globes and attended to by a pair of adepts, the study was piled high with books, parchment, and dataslates.

The railcar's ramp dropped and Dimitri Vlasna marched out onto the carpet. Behind him, an old man sat in the car.

"We pulled the items you requested, Equerry. Do you need anything else?"

"No," Dimitri replied. "Thank you, Librarian Ewer."

The librarian nodded in respect and closed the door. The railcar sped away on its track, and Dimitri turned back to the selection of materials.

All the information before him had been pulled from the library's great recesses, and gave as clear a picture as was possible of xeno-human relations and phobias throughout the history of the Imperium. Taking a deep breath, he started forward.

This, and waking up with the imprint of a page on his cheek, would be his R&R.

The Next Morning

Jax was the first on the assembly field in the morning, followed quickly by Yevina Cardigan. Manker was third, along with the rest of his Blackened Guard, and as he formed them into jump position, Animal Mother made his way to the command squad. Menshaw and Sternev showed up late, each stumbling from the inner spire to end up at Jax's side.

Dimitri was last, and very late, arriving on a Valkyrie from the north. He hopped down onto the dewy grass and made his way onto the rockcrete jump pad, greeting Jax with a nod.

"You're kinda late," Jax said.

"Whatever," Dimitri replied, massaging his eyes with the rubber finger-pads of his gloves.

Jax frowned. "What crawled up your ass?"

"Nothing. We leaving or what?"

Jax shook his head and nodded to Yevina. She moved closer and he grabbed her by the shoulder. "Okay, here we go."

A whine built up in the air, and Dimitri's hair stood on end. He closed his eyes.

_Fshwambamfamf!_

**Author's Note: I would have gone on and done the Zuvens with this, but I just figured I'd slow it down even more and do some funny character bits. It was important the people from different regiments begin to mesh, and besides, I was feeling kinda Christmas-y, and I figure this was the closest I could get _The Confederate_ to feeling jolly.**

**Anyway, happy holidays. I promise we'll shoot some stuff next time. Later.**


	45. Chapter 45: TBAL: Everything Old is

Sometimes, in the deepest recesses of his sleep, he could hear them shrieking, the burbling horde coming to kill him, their rending talons clacking off carapace, swarming across an endless desert. He stood in a bunker, always the same bunker, with no weapon. He was naked, and only able to watch them as they came on, ready to tear his body apart and devour him. Only when they were finally upon him, when he was scant seconds from death, would he awaken.

"Jax! Wake up!"

Jax opened his eyes to see Dimitri above him. His equerry was shaking him by the shoulders, and Jax's unsecured visor was sliding up and down with each movement.

"Huh?" he asked.

"You're running late."

Jax sat up and clamped the visor in place. "Nah, we ain't got to jump for another hour."

"Not for the jump to Nalith, Jax." Dimitri walked out of the bedroom, but kept up conversation by yelling back at Jax. "You've two jobs, remember?"

"Oh." Jax looked out the arch windows next to his bed at the Administratum spire looming out of the broad streets of the Imperial Palace grounds. "That."

"Yes, that," Dimitri said, returning with two cups of caffeine. He handed one to Jax. "Master of the Administratum and highest of the High Lords of Terra. You remember that, now?"

"Yeah, thanks Mom."

"Welcome, honey," Dimitri said, matching Jax's sarcasm step for step. "Now get your capes on. We're using 7th Company as escorts."

Jax got up and made his way over to his clothing rack, where he pulled on the sheaf of capes. They draped across his right shoulder when he wasn't in combat, and were of staggered length so that each emblem stood out in at least some capacity. Once he had it on, Dimitri came over and made it a point to put the golden heraldry of the Administratum office on top of the others.

"Thanks," Jax said, picking up his adamantium blade. "7th Company's the Zuvens. Didn't they just join up?"

"Zuvenians," Dimitri said. He ignored Jax's 'whatever' and continued. "So far, they've seen no official action, either combat or ceremonial."

"So what the hell're they doing as my escort?"

"Their Colonel Eormel requested the duty. Seems he's eager to show what his men are capable of in their new armor."

Jax frowned. "No dice, Dimitri. I already know his boys can fight. I've read those reports you gave me. They ain't parade ground material."

"You have a better idea where they can prove themselves?"

"Yeah." Jax paused to pluck his Impaler off the plaque over his headboard and lock it to his thigh. "They can come with us to Nalith. Let Manker's boys take the day off."

"I feel as though Harken might not like that."

"Harken needs to get over himself," Jax snapped. "Fact is, this is my first meeting with the High Lords, and I need to show the best of the Legion."

"And Manker's Blackened Guard are better in synchronization for marching and parade purposes," Dimitri finished.

He was a little bothered that he hadn't come up with the idea. Jax was becoming more accustomed to his role as Battle Saint every day. Dimitri had never thought Jax truly inept, but with this level of command decision making suddenly on display, he was forced to admit that he may have underestimated the Confederate.

"And the black armor looks better," Jax said, heading out of the bedroom and toward the door to his suite. "Politics is all about dickswinging, Dimitri."

Jax threw open the door and marched into the hallway. Immediately, Menshaw and Sternev snapped to attention.

"Calm down, boys," he said. "Gotta look relaxed for the politicians."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 45: To Build a Legion: Part 6: Everything Old is Young Again_

The warp exit signature flared on the fleet's sensors for little more than a second before fading completely. Few noticed the anomaly, and as the strike cruiser moved farther into the fold of ships in orbit around Carthage, it did so undetected. Only when it was at the heart of the fleet, moving alongside the conglomerate's flagship, did it make it's presence known.

"Vox-link established," Drake reported. "Speak when ready, lord."

Adamus nodded and, relaxed on his command throne, spoke into the handset. "This is War Captain Adamus Luchance of the Black Legion, reporting in."

At once, the vox exploded with counter-calls, as the captains of the surrounding ships voiced their objections. Adamus held the handset away from his ear and smiled.

"Glad they're happy to see us," he said, earning a grin out of Drake. Near the auspex pit, Omnios chuckled, his voice hollow in his empty helmet. Tharok turned from where he was looking into the cage next to Adamus's throne.

"Did you say something, lord?"

"Shut up." Adamus put the handset to his mouth again. The voices had quieted. "Am I very late?"

"SILENCE, WHORESON!" shouted a voice. It was hard-edged and raspy from centuries spent yelling out its throat. Adamus recognized it immediately.

"Kharn, so good to hear from you again."

"I WILL KILL YOUR FACE!"

"I'm not sure that makes sense."

Kharn started to speak again, but his voxlink went dead with a squelch of static. Someone had closed it forcibly, and now, that someone spoke up.

"Adamus Luchance, we must speak."

"Indeed," Adamus replied smoothly. "Where shall we meet?"

A hum filled the bridge, followed by a flash of red light. The stench of brimstone washed across the decking, and the teleported figure stood from its crouch. He was gigantic, and as he looked at Adamus, he did so with eyes as black as the void. His right arm, a titanic power claw, pointed to the deck between his massive boots.

"Here," said Huron Blackheart.

(' ')

Dimitri followed Jax into his balcony suite in the council chambers, leading himself the trail of adjutants and members of the Legion's command echelons that were to attend along with their Battle Saint. He pulled aside just within the entryway and counted off the members that followed him in. When all had gone through, he hadn't seen Castarius. He checked the corridor outside, both sides, before turning to the nearest Dog.

It was Manker.

"Harken, have you seen Castarius?"

Manker glared at him. He was still pissed about being pulled from the Nalith party, Dimitri realized.

"Oh, get over it. You know why we're doing it. The Zuvenians need experience, and they want to prove they're worth while."

"That was a military decision," Manker replied.

"Are you implying that I went over your head?"

Manker didn't reply.

"Well, technically, it was a morale decision, which is under Jax's direct purview, and need I remind you that he is the Battle Saint and reserves the right to alter any aspect of this Legion as he deems necessary."

"But—" Manker started.

"And," Dimitri said, "I don't think you're in any place to criticize unsolicited changes. I've read the doctrinal updates. Both Jax and I agree with them, but would it have killed out to run it by us before making the changes law?"

Manker narrowed his eyes even further. "No."

"Good. So we're on the same page, then?"

"Yes," Manker said, the venom in his words audible. "Castarius is in the Mechanicus booth."

"Thank you."

Dimitri stepped past the general and into the booth proper. Jax had yet to take his seat, and instead was chatting with a massive, half-naked spear-totting warrior.

Looking across the chamber wall, Dimitri spotted the Mechanicus balcony. At its center was Fabricator General Lovidicus, perched upon his throne as a bulky mass of cogitators and wires attended to by a platoon of techpriests.

Dimitri had seen Lovidicus in other bodies, slender combat types and flashy display forms, and he knew for certain that this large, bulky tank of a body was not necessary. Like all things in the chamber, it was political; the Fabricator General wanted to appear unwieldy to the other councilmen, so as to force them to underestimate his abilities.

Shrewd politics. Dimitri admired him.

Castarius stood next to Lovidicus, speaking so quietly even Dimitri's suit couldn't decipher the words. It came across as more than a little suspicious looking, and Dimitri felt a momentary worry that Castarius was somehow working against them. It was completely irrational, and the Techmarine looked over at Dimitri and nodded, as if to sooth his fears.

"Dimitri!" Jax said, clapping his equerry on the shoulder and yanking Dimitri from his thoughts. "You remember Valdon, right?"

"Yes," Dimitri replied. "Hello, Captain-General."

Valdon nodded to him, the feathers running from his head down his back jostling with the motion. "Equerry Vlasna."

"We ready to start?" Jax asked.

"That depends on you," Valdon replied.

"How you figure?"

Dimitri cut in. "As Master of the Administratum, you are the de facto head of council for the High Lords during meetings. It is your place to declare a meeting is in session."

Jax stared at him. "Shit."

"Yes, shit indeed," Valdon said with a smile. He started for the door. "I should see to my own balcony, seeing as how you're about to start. Good luck, Confederate."

"Thanks," Jax groaned and flopped back onto his throne. The chair had been built for Xanthius, and its gilded iron frame creaked under Jax's weight, but held by some miracle.

"How do I start this shindig?"

"Read this." Dimitri handed him a dataslate.

Jax looked over its contents and sighed. "You're fucking with me."

"Not a bit."

"This is stupid."

"Just read it so we can get this over with."

Jax cleared his throat and got to his feet. "Members of the High Lords of Terra, we convene here to do the business of the Imperium of Man. Commence."

Someone in one of the other balconies clapped, but nothing else happened. Dimitri sighed.

This was going to be awkward…

(' ')

Adamus stood from his command throne with deliberate slowness, one hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. Around the bridge, the rest of his command echelon did the same, and at his side, Tharok produced an autocannon from his arm. Drake's blade encarmine came out of its sheath and he rested it, depowered, on his shoulder.

Not that he expected Blackheart to attack him outright, but experience had taught him to be ready for anything when dealing with other champions of Chaos. Personalities had a tendency to get in the way of logic amongst their kind, and while Blackheart was a far cry from someone like Kharn the Betrayer, caution was still advised.

"Relax, Adamus," rumbled the Blood Reaver. "We've known each other too long to fall to bloodshed now."

"I should think so," Adamus replied, making a quick click of his throat-vox. Taking his signal, the men around him lowered their weapons. Adamus kept his hand on Zeruel's pommel. "So, you wanted to talk to me?"

Blackheart nodded, slowly. "The fleet is assembled in full, Adamus, and we will be translating to our destination shortly. I have already made agreements with the other champions here today, and now I would make one with you."

Blackheart strode across the deck to Adamus and held out his arm. "Will you join me as a brother?"

"With respect, lord, no," Adamus said. He took the warlord's arm in a warrior's shake. "But I will gladly wage war alongside you."

A smile creased Blackheart's face, cracking the aged skin and drawing thin runnels of black vitae along his pale cheeks. "Fine. Death to the False Emperor."

"Death to the False Emperor," Adamus agreed. "Now then, what world are we taking?"

"A world that has been a thorn in my side for too long, War Captain," Blackheart's grin grew. "We are going to burn Marathon."

(' ')

_Fshwambamfamf!_

The first thing Dimitri noticed was the smell. Nalith was a forest world, and it smelled of wet undergrowth, moss, and the aftershocks of a rainstorm. It was a moist world, so much that it came through his suit's filtration system, and he just pulled off his helmet to keep his view from fogging up.

Next to him, Jax popped his visor and took in a deep breath. "Nice place," he muttered.

Dimitri nodded. The clearing they had arrived in was little more than a patch of bare grass surrounded by the towering trunks, but it was that simplicity that impressed him. In the past year, he had seen so many planets that they had become a blur of extremes.

Nalith was a slice of peace, and as the Zuvenian Dogs of 7th Company fanned out around the clearing, Dimitri felt a calm wash over him. Judging by the relaxed movements of the rest of the landing party, they felt it, too.

It was this lackadaisical attitude that made them so easy to ambush.

Colonel Eormel, the Zuvenian officer so eager to impress, caught the telltale hint of the coming attack before anyone else, and had just opened his mouth to belt a warning when the lasbolts started flying.

Shouts sounded over the commlink as the rounds hammered home, calls for help sending up alongside firing orders. Lasbolts dug holes in the dirt and ricocheted from the Dogs' super-hardened armor, careening off into the forest, shattering branches.

Dimitri slammed his helmet back into place. His visor ticked off the angles of attack and projected amount of shooters. The figure was ridiculous.

"All units, return with blanket fire!" Eormel shouted. "Overlapping fields! Cut them down!"

The roar of massed Impaler fire drowned the snap-crack of the lasguns, and the outer edges of the forest began to fall. Trunks the width of groundcars splintered as trees came down, and after a moment, there were clear lanes of fire into the forest all around. The clearing had grown by ten meters.

"Hold!" Eormel sounded, and the firing stopped. "Sound off!"

A round of clears sounded from the squad leaders, and Eormel reported it in to Dimitri and Jax.

"Thanks, Colonel," Jax replied, thumping Eormel on the shoulder. "Your boys are the real deal."

Eormel made the sign of the aquilla. "Thank you, Battle Saint."

"No problem. Let's find out just what you hit."

As it turned out, what they hit had been a series of automated turret drones. Each comprised of quad-linked lasguns mounted on crawler treads, the drones had laid in wait of their arrival before delivering the fusillade according to remote auspex devices that served as heads to their stubby bodies.

One of the drones was larger than the others and harbored a lascannon. It had not fired during the ambush, and as such hadn't been targeted by the return fire.

That said, Jax destroyed it on sight with a rocket, and only afterward noticed the note taped to its body. Plucking it from the drone's hull, Jax held it up to his faceplate. He frowned.

"What is it?" Dimitri asked, and caught the note as Jax flicked it to him.

'Sorry for the hot welcome,' it read, 'had to know you were real.' Dimitri turned it over and read off a series of numbers.

"Map coordinates." He loaded them in his visor and overlaid the location on the sketchy topograph he had of the planet. "They're in a region called the Eternity Peaks, a mountain range northeast of here. What do you think?"

Jax rubbed the moss with his toe and mulled it over. After a moment, he shrugged. "Fuck it, why not? Tell Eormel to form his boys up and—"

Suddenly, an arrow slammed into the bark next to Jax's head with a thunk and stayed there. Jax and Dimitri tracked its trajectory, weapons up, but there was no one there. Dimitri flicked to infrared, but still got no fix. Angry, he marched over and pulled the arrow out of the bark, finding a note wrapped around its wobbling haft.

He pulled it off and read aloud. "Just the two of you. No friends allowed."

"Great." Jax spat into the dirt. "Anything in your books say these guys were fucking loony?"

"No," Dimitri replied. "But it looks like they're damn stealthy."

(' ')

They told Eormel and the rest to stay put and started on their way alone, moving through the forest on a constant incline that grew steeper with every few hundred yards as they neared the base of the mountain range. Dimitri had his rifle slung and walked with his hands at his sides, putting one foot in front of the other, lost in thought. Jax walked with his sword in hand, kneading its silver grip in his rubber palm. He was angry about being toyed with, and in his silence, his anger was spreading to his equerry.

Dimitri thought about all he actually knew about the Nalith soldiers, and realized that aside from a very heartfelt communiqué from a sector councilman named Knoy, he knew next to nothing about the regiments. Not that he had needed any at the time; Knoy seemed trustworthy enough, and the documentation he provided of the Nalith contributions to the Emperor's wars had seemed sound enough.

Of course, now that he was here in woods that seemed to have never seen a living man before, he was convinced the communiqué had been a farce. Nalith was uninhabited by Imperial civilization, and aside from some half-buried ruins spotted here and there, it hadn't seen any other civilization for a very long time.

After a while, the trees began to fall away, replaced by rocky crags and hard-packed or melting snow. Beneath his boots, the ground came away in sloughs of mud, and Dimitri had to grab at the rock with his hands to keep from sliding away.

He initially thought it to all be a clever way of getting Jax singled out for execution, and he had yet to write that off. They would have their shot at any moment along this hike, but they had yet to take it, so they were either the dumbest assassins in the world to try and draw the Confederate in for a close fight, or they were something altogether different.

They reached a straight cliff face and, grumbling, Jax put away his sword. He reached up and made a handhold in the frozen granite and pulled himself up, burying a boot in the cliff to give himself leverage. Like this, he began to climb, and Dimitri followed suit.

4,000 feet above them, in the settling twilight of evening, a silhouette watched their ascent.

(' ')

Jax got up first and pulled Dimitri up after him. Together, they turned to face their summoner.

The meeting place was a tiny plateau in the mid-mountain reaches of the Eternity Peaks. In its center was a deep pool of steaming water, and a cabin leaned nearby, smoke pouring from its stone chimney. It had begun to snow, and though it was late evening, Dimitri could still see the beauty of the mountain range laid out below them.

It was spectacular, but Dimitri couldn't have cared less. Even with the suit handling all the physical work, the climb had been exhausting on his mind. He couldn't think beyond the sound of his hands and feet cutting glass and the constant whirr of his armor joints.

Jax wasn't so tired, and as he pulled his sword from its sheath, he announced his displeasure to the world.

"All right, I'm here, ya son of a bitch," he growled to the empty plateau. "I know someone's watching me, so why don't you just come on out, huh?"

And then he did.

The man appeared from nowhere, standing from a crouch no more than three feet in front of him to throw a cloak over his shoulder. He pulled a hood back and revealed a young face, younger even than Dimitri, but with a hard look to his eyes. The look wasn't like Trooper Hale of 1st Company. Hale had more cocksureness, more arrogance, both in line with is age. This kid looked different than that. His eyes looked older than time itself, world-weary and experienced beyond belief.

"Battle Saint," he said. "I think I've wanted to meet you for a while."

Jax glared down at him. "You're sneaky. I thought there was a regiment of guys like you. What happened to that? Your robot friends kill them?"

"I don't believe there ever was a regiment," said the man. "I think I told you that to bring you here."

"You think!" Jax shouted.

"So," Dimitri said, stepping past Jax to head off the confrontation, "there is no sector councilman Knoy, nor a Nalith infantry regiment."

"Nope," said the man. "In fact, I'm probably the only one living here. I think…"

"Right, and just what is your name?" Dimitri pressed.

"I hardly think that matters."

"Since when?"

"Since I forgot it."

Jax barked a humorless laugh. "Perfect! A lonesome loony who don't even know his own damn name!"

"Jax…" Dimitri started, but the Confederate would have none of it.

"We climbed four hours for this? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"I'm worth it, sirs," said the boy.

Jax marched right up into the kid's face and poked him in the chest with a giant, armor-shod finger. "Give me one good reason why we should even listen to you, you little prick!"

The kid moved faster than Dimitri had ever seen a person move. Striking with rapidity and precision that put Astartes to shame, he slammed four fingers into a thin plate on Jax's midsection. There was a crack of steel and shriek of electronics shorting, and Jax hit the ground on his back.

Dimitri's Impaler was out in an instant, locked onto the kid's head. The kid didn't move. Jax laughed and pulled himself to his feet.

"All right, all right, that was kinda impressive," he said. "But you don't learn that as a little kid, man. How old are you?"

"Two-hundred and fifty," he replied instantly. "Been here since everything ended in the core worlds. Colonel told me to stay put and wait for you lot."

"That's awfully cryptic," Dimitri said. He finally lowered his rifle. "Can you be more specific?"

The kid smiled. "Can't even remember my own name, son, so you'll forgive me if I can't tell you the colonel's name, or what the hell the core worlds were, or why the hell I got picked to stay here with the eternity pool and wait it out alone." He stopped and considered that a minute. "Come to think of it, I'd wager I'm more than a bit insane."

"No shit?" Jax said. He looked back at Dimitri. "Looks like we're gonna be another company short, pal. What do you think?"

Dimitri shrugged. "I guess we should take him with us. After all, we came all this way, and he seems like he has some skills."

Jax nodded. "Then it's done. Come on, old kid, we've got a hell of a climb back down."

Jax and Dimitri had already started for the cliff when the man cleared his throat. "Um, why don't you just use the stairs?"

"What stairs?" Dimitri followed the pointing finger to the row of perfectly carved steps built into the mountain that led all the way down to the foot of the range. "Oh, those stairs. Wonderful."

(' ')

They waited a few minutes for their new charge to gather his things before leaving. When he emerged from the cabin, he had a rucksack over his shoulder and a long stormcoat pulled around his shoulders to keep the cold out. His combat boots had fresh tape on them, and the lasgun over his shoulder was augmented by a longlas held at his side. The hilt of a power sword stuck out of his rucksack, and Jax pointed it out.

"You got a blade?"

"Yeah," he replied, pulling it out and clicking the power stud. The blade came to life with a flicker of blue force. "It's been here as long as I have."

"Nice," Jax said. He held up his own sword and fed some power into it from his palm. The blade lit up pure white.

Dimitri spoke up. "Sorry, but what do we call you if you have no name?"

The man shrugged. "I don't really care. You pick one."

Dimitri opened his mouth to reply, to say that the idea was silly, and that even if it was up to them, he couldn't possibly have come up with a name to fit the man.

But he never got a chance to, because Jax disagreed with him, and had a name all ready for him.

"Rover," the Confederate said. "Rover Roverson."

"Jax!"

"Sorry," Jax said, "_Trooper_ Rover Roverson."

Rover shrugged. "That'll work."

"Perfect!" Jax clapped him on the shoulder. "Then let's get going. We've got a long road to the bottom ahead of us."

Jax led the way, starting down the steps with his new stealth trooper behind him. Dimitri lingered a moment.

So now they had a mysterious, amnesiac, inexplicably youthful old man who may or may not have become so thanks to the water of these mountains, and who admitted to being mentally unstable. And they had failed to recruit a company. Again.

Dimitri sighed and hurried to catch up with them. There was a schedule to keep and things to do on Terra if they were going to make it to Marathon by next week.

(' ')

Across the galaxy, Colonel Ivan Rakatev looked up from his billet balcony at the skyline of Central Acropolis. The city was the largest on Marathon, and its shining towers were the envy of pleasure worlds. Gardens served as medians between the skyways that twisted in and out of the towers, all elevated above ground so as to keep from interfering with the lush city parks.

Civilians walked along the throughways below his balcony, window shopping, and the sight made Rakatev smile. So many years off-world and nothing had changed. It made him feel good to know all the fighting and dying had kept something safe, and the calm almost made him forget about the patch over his eye.

There was a knock at the door followed by a creak as Rakatev's adjutant let himself in. The colonel didn't object to the intrusion. He and Lang had served together long enough to feel comfortable with each other.

"Enjoying your break, Lang?" Rakatev turned from the view. "I know I've been…"

His voice died in his throat when he saw the look on his adjutant's face. The lad was armored up, too, his flak armor cinched down across his fatigues, and a lasgun was strapped to his back alongside the vox unit.

"What's wrong?"

"Sir," Lang said, holding out the vox-horn, "something's gone wrong."

Rakatev snatched the horn and held it to his ear. He recognized the voice immediately as Lord General Samatec, but what he heard sounded alien. The words couldn't be true. This couldn't be happening.

Rakatev turned and looked up into the sky as a wave of meteors split the atmosphere.

Drop pods.

Chaos had come to Marathon.

**Author's Note: Aaaaaand end arc. Next chapter we kick off the fight for Marathon, which will be the first heavy action for the newly minted Dogs of War Legion. The return of the Marathon characters from the first arc, both Guard and Astartes alike, and a rematch between Adamus and Jax, and what consequences that will have. Seven companies of Dogs, Huron Blackheart and his Red Corsairs, Kharn the Betrayer, and the death of a planet.**

**In short, I've got my characters. Now it's time for war.**

**Oh, you may have noticed the Dogs are a tad short on manpower. If they actually get the Marathon soldiers they want, then they'll still have two companies' worth of empty slots in the roster. What could fill this gap, I wonder?**

**Anyway, have a good week. Next Saturday, Marathon burns.**


	46. Chapter 46: Marathon: Opening Licks

Settled late in M39, the planet Marathon was founded as a colony world by a Rogue Trader named Gerismund. A man with great foresight, Gerismund realized the trade potential of the Novaguard sector. After so many centuries plagued by warp storms, the sector was finally coming out of obscurity, offering virgin space for colonists and entrepreneurs. Immediately, Gerismund moved his base of operations from a fleet of voidships to a planet on the very edge of the sector, in a system closest to the nearby settled sectors.

Gerismund named it Marathon, though by the time it became prevalent in sector politics, none of its inhabitants could remember Gerismund's name. As the world he founded grew, greater traders than he took over, and Marathon left him behind in an amasec-fueled rage. He remained in this rage until he died at the age of eighty-seven, a victim of his own sidearm.

Marathon lived on without him. As the Novaguard sector was colonized, the trader guilds of Marathon grew rich, and when the corrupted inhabitants of the sector began to resist, Marathon served its purpose, providing an orbital port system for Imperial fleets, as well as food for the war effort.

This first war, dubbed 'the Novaguard Reclamation Crusade' by the Imperium officials, was led by a cabinet of commanders including Lord General Sussex of Krieg, High Commander Lucinta of the Voystran Firstborn, and Princeps Majoris Bakwel of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

The history of this crusade has been documented well, and for the purposes here serves only to distinguish the founding and service of the Marathon 1st Infantry, who at the climactic Battle of Icharan Prime famously used Munitorium transport trucks to mobilize faster, outmaneuver and encircle the forces of Horstgud the Bloodied. This action cemented a tradition amongst Marathon units of being solid mechanized infantry, and earning the 1st a commendation from theatre commander Sussex. This last commendation earned the 1st the epitaph 'Saluted'.

By M41, Marathon was the rock upon which the sector hung, galactic north to south. It's shipyards were a frequent stop-off for merchants moving in and out of the cluster, and as the Red Corsairs under Huron Blackheart began to raid the worlds within, it was Marathon High Command that undertook leadership of what came to be known as the Novaguard War. Quickly, the Blood Reaver began to regret his attempted takeover, and soon learned that with every step he took in the contested sector, the men of Marathon would make his armies pay in blood.

It was late in 998, in the seventy-fifth year of the Novaguard War, that Huron Blackheart finally took his revenge, beginning with a feigned spin-ward strike at the agri-worlds of Hecatar and Belfort. Judging by preliminary reports, Marathon High Command guessed this to be the next phase of the Blackheart's advance. If Hecatar and Belfort fell, all Imperial forays into the Novaguard cluster would rely on food supply from other sectors, making any counter-offensive fragile to the point of impossible.

So, not realizing the 'offensive' as the three raiding parties it was, the entirety of Marathon's resources, men, ships, and even three companies of the vaunted Sons of Marathon Astartes, made way for the western arm of the sector, leaving their backdoor wide open.

It was through this backdoor that Huron Blackheart marched an entire fleet into orbit around Marathon itself.

The resulting battle would be the lynchpin of the entire Novaguard War, and decide the destiny of the sector until the end of all time.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 46: The Fall of Marathon: Part 1: Opening Licks_

All fighting on Marathon hinged upon control of the Central Acropolis. As the largest city on the planet, the coastal megalopolis served as Marathon's capital, and in its tallest spires held the offices of Marathon High Command. A beautiful city of gardens and canals, the Acropolis lay in the shadow of a great mountain range, and was flanked on both sides by the planet's largest oceans, Aquest and Aquast. The city's skyway system, elevated above the ground to keep the gardens safe, was the most economical and well-maintained of any in the segmentum, a testament to Marathon ingenuity.

The skyways converged most at three particular points throughout the city: the Grand Stadium, the District of the Cult Imperialis, and the High Command Towers themselves. For Huron Blackheart, control of these locations was paramount if he was to land and move his troops effectively throughout the Acropolis.

Kharn the Betrayer knew none of this. He had been at the briefing, but he hadn't heard any of it beyond his own drop coordinates, and even that had been left to his adjutant, man whose name Kharn forgot. His name wasn't important, thought the Betrayer. All that mattered was blood and his axe and spilling blood with the axe and taking skulls and killing killing killing blood. Blackheart talked too much. A man like Blackheart with a nickname with blood in it ought to have understood it better. Blackheart ought to not talk so much. Talking just got in the way. Kharn knew this. The more you talked, the less you could hear the screams, and next to the blood and the skulls and the axe, the screams were the best part.

The drop pod hit the ground. Kharn was killing before he even got out of the harness, reaching over and snapping some World Eater's neck. He screamed and bashed his head against the harness and when the ramp dropped he ran out and cut a priest in half. Blood splashed across his mouth grille. It dripped through and Kharn could lick it with his tongue.

Howling with a pleasure all its own, Kharn ran into the Cathedral of the Emperor Transcendent.

(' ')

The Grand Stadium of the Central Acropolis was the largest man-made structure on Marathon, capable of housing 400,000 spectators at once. At the time of the Chaos invasion, the Grand Stadium was filled to capacity. A padball tournament was being held throughout the week, and the day's game would decide the second competitor to attend the championship match the following weekend.

No one noticed the drop pods until they crashed into the field.

The doors blasted down and the Black Legionaries of Adamus Luchance's Warband stepped onto the turf. From the command pod strode Adamus himself, his blackened wargear like a blight on the field of green. His cloak whipped behind him, and he held his helmet in the crux of his arm. He smiled and brushed a strand of white hair from his face.

Tharok followed the War Captain, an industrial voxsponder set strapped to his broad shoulders. Quietly, he handed Adamus a microhorn. As the young lord spoke, his words were broadcast to the entire stadium.

"Mortals, I hope you have enjoyed your faux combat for the day, because it is the last thing you are ever going to experience. This stadium will forever be a monument to your failure, and serve as the bowl in which we will collect your blood for sacrifice to the true rulers of the universe."

Adamus looked to Omnios, ignorant of the murmuring crowd. "Do it."

The Thousand Sons sorcerer nodded and, kneeling at half-field, began a series of incantations. The air thickened with foul energies, and the thin grass stood on end. Several of the athletes still on the field vomited down the front of their padding. The crowd's murmuring grew louder.

One of the team captains marched up to Adamus, and in a rare display of bravery began shouting at him.

"You damn heretic! Why don't you take off that armor you're hiding behind and fight like a real man, huh?"

The man marched to within ten inches of the Chaos lord, the top of his blond hair reaching mid-way up Adamus's chest.

The War Captain smiled down at him. "Brave, mortal," he said, "but stupid."

With a quickness unmatched by any without proper augmentation, Adamus slapped the man across the face, shattering his jaw and flinging him eight feet to the right. He landed on his face and broke his neck. The crowd screamed, and in their panic, ran for the exits.

A mob mentality took over, and men became wild animals, fighting, biting and dragging to get over one another. Bones broke, crushed in the press of fleeing bodies. Children and the elderly were trampled. Men fought and stabbed and killed to get out of the stadium.

But it was too late. Omnios's shield ward had already encompassed the dome, and nothing short of an artillery barrage could take it down.

In the field, Adamus grinned and held up the mic again. "Welcome to your deaths. Brothers? If you would do the honors?"

The Black Legionaries nodded, and as one, all hundred of them moved into the crowd. None drew their bolters—these targets were beneath those weapons. Chainswords would do.

The roar of blades filled the air, and the slaughter began.

(' ')

"Form up, phalanx positions, on the altar!" shouted Sister Superior Maybro, her power armor chugging as she marched down the aisle.

Around her, the main prayer hall of the Cathedral was echoing with the sounds of panic. Shamsel, members of the lower priesthood of Marathon, were losing their minds to self-preservation. They fled to hiding, and they would probably succeed, at least for a while. The Cathedral of the Emperor Transcendent was the second largest building on the planet, second only to the Grand Stadium. Unless Chaos leveled the place, the shamsel could hide out in the wings and attics till doomsday.

But Sister Superior Maybro was a member of the Adepta Sororitas, and she would be damned to hell before she ran and hid like a scared dog. She was a veteran of Icharan, damnit! She had an iron will and tactics passed down from the God-Emperor Himself! There was nothing she couldn't handle.

"Sister Haras, move to your left and grip that weapon like you mean it!" Maybro ordered. Her voice came out scratchy thanks to a foil-muscle tongue. Her words tended to scare young children. Sister Haras moved her plasma cannon like she meant it.

Maybro took up her own position behind the altar itself, between Sisters Ewer and Feruch, and drew her boltgun and power sword. Beyond the doors to the chamber, the sounds of the enemy drew closer.

"Sisters!" Maybro shouted. "Today, give them holy hell! For the Emperor!"

"For the Emperor!" sounded the girls.

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" roared Kharn the Betrayer.

A chain axe head the size of a ten year old busted down the gold-flecked double doors and a blood-red Astartes charged into the room. Sister Haras's plasma cannon thundered, and the doorframe collapsed, burning, under the discharge.

Kharn, having dodged the shot, rolled to his feet and hurled another axe up at the sisters. The axe, still clutched by the severed arm of one of the World Eaters, slammed into Sister Haras's chest. As she fell, the plasma gunner fired a final blast that overcharged her weapon, producing a starburst explosion that blinded Maybro.

When she blinked her eyes clear, Kharn was upon them. Sister Ewer was cut in half vertically, while Sister Feruch ended up gutted and bleeding on the floor. Kharn laid into another girl, Maybro wasn't sure who, severing her head from her shoulders. He punched clean through Sister Wexal's chest, ignored a burst of fire from Maybro's boltgun, and kicked Sister Puor across the stage. Puor ended up impaled on an organ pipe.

Maybro swung her power sword, an ancient blade passed down to her through a long line of sisters since the founding of her order. Its steel was priceless, the kind of priceless that ignored armor and skin and bone and simply killed.

The blade shattered on impact with Kharn's Gorechild. The axe carried through, cutting Maybro from the collar to the pelvis in one stroke.

Kharn pulled the axe out and Maybro fell. She was dead before she hit the ground.

Alone, on the pile of bodies, Kharn roared. The stained glass mural behind him shattered.

All in all, the day was off to a fine start.

(' ')

Preferring the direct approach to command, Huron Blackheart led the attack on Marathon High Command himself.

A cluster of three towers interlinked by open-air bridges, the High Command was a tough nut to crack from any ground-troop perspective, and landing a drop pod on such a precise target wasn't an easy task for even the most powerful logic arrays.

So, Blackheart did it himself, guiding the drop pod in by the touch of his own armored hand. The pod broke through the roof of the southernmost tower, coming to a stop on the fourth floor. The door opened and water rushed in, flooding the compartment in seconds.

Blackheart clawed his way out through the wall of the pod and waded through the murk, up a steep incline, until his face broke the surface. The pod had landed in an artificial pond built into the tower's eatery. Blackheart emerged from the depths, the water sloughed off his armor in a steaming rain. His bodyguard followed him, and the politicians and adepts eating in the small café screamed at the sight. Blackheart's Corsairs let them flee, conserving ammunition for the real threat.

Blackheart led the way through the tower; having memorized the route after forty years of planning the attack, he knew exactly where to go and what to do. He marched down a broad colonnade, his Corsairs fanning out behind him to clear rooms. Chainswords growled and screams emerged from the individual departments cleared along the way.

These actions weren't necessary—the south tower was the center of Marathon's financial interests, quite irrelevant in a planetary siege—but Blackheart didn't order them to stop. He had enough bodyguards still with him, and besides, he didn't want to ruin their fun.

Blackheart marched onto one of the connecting bridges, leading to the northern tower. To the west, he could see the Grand Stadium covered by an eldritch bubble of energy. He could hear the screams on the wind, even over the wailing of alarms.

The 'real threat' emerged fifteen seconds later in the form of a fusillade of hellgun fire from the opposite side of the bridge. A phalanx of shock troops in lightweight, semi-powered golden armor advanced from the opposite tower. These were the High Guardsmen of Marathon, the planetary elite guard. They were highly trained, expertly drilled, and equipped with the finest weapons the High Command in its infinite wealth could afford them. Each wielded a hellgun, and the highest ranking of them totted a power sword.

The Corsair to Blackheart's right dropped, his armor punctured in a thousand places by the Imperial salvo. The Astartes to his left faired better, felling two with his bolter before taking a shot through the eyepiece.

Blackheart roared and plowed forward, ignorant of the incoming fire. Lasblasts panged from his Terminator plate, and his footfall shook the bridge. The forward ranks of the High Guard aimed up as he came upon them, firing vertically just to hit him. The closest to him twitched, a flake of fear appearing behind his golden visor.

Blackheart cut him apart, the Tyrant's Claw shredding the expensive armor. His axe landed on the next man, halving him at the waist. Three more came at him from the side, stabbing with the vibra-staves mounted as bayonets. Given the chance and an adequate weak point, the staves might have cut the Blood Reaver, but he never gave them the chance. With a roar, Blackheart hurled them from the bridge with one sweep of his arm, and they tumbled away into the cityscape below.

The ranking officer of the phalanx threw himself forward, power sword crackling. Blackheart ignited the flamer in his wrist and washed the officer with burning promethium. The man fell to the deck, writhing as his flesh cooked beneath his heated warplate.

Huron Blackheart left him to savor the agonizing death and strode into the northern command tower. More Corsair drop pods were slamming down into High Command, and as he marched through the halls, the Blood Reaver could hear the sounds of warfare ringing from the walls around him; bolter fire, las-shot, and the death screams of the Imperials.

Blackheart followed the map in his memory. Right turn, three hundred steps, left turn, flight of stairs, melta-bomb. _Melta-bomb_.

Blackheart spun away before the charge detonated, and took the majority of the damage across his giant back. He stumbled, and before the joints of his Terminator plate could compensate, he was attacked from three different angles. The High Guard were even better equipped this time, each one with a force mace of considerable size, and they moved fast for humans.

They almost survived their own ambush.

Blackheart stood, the last of the dead High Guard sliding from his claw to a meaty thump on the tile. He looked to his right and smiled at who he saw.

"High Governor Thedro," he hissed, bringing his axe up. "Good to see you kept the armor."

Formerly a Lord General of the Imperial side of the Novaguard War, Thedro had retired long ago to pursue a career in politics, a career that now saw him as the most important man in the sector. He confronted Blackheart now in a suit of the most ornate non-Astartes power armor in the segmentum, and with a pair of lightning claws fit for a chapter master.

The suit and claws were from his time in the Guard. The augmetic arm was too, an add-on thanks to Blackheart's axe on Garland III so many years before. Thedro had been just a young major of twenty-five back then, and he hadn't had the armor. But today, he was ninety-seven, and he had a sick feeling that no matter what armor he wore, the Blood Reaver would kill him this day.

"Well then, Traitor, have it your way," said Thedro, hefting his claws. "For the Emperor!"

(' ')

Troop ships thundered down from the sky, passing through the shield dome and coming to rest on the stadium grounds. Thrusters scorched the turf, ramps dug gouges into the dirt, and the boots, claws, and splayed hoofs of Chaos clambered down onto the field.

Members of the Blood Pact elite infantry, their lasguns and body armor painted a dull crimson, moved out on foot or in Chimeras, a dark reflection of Marathon's own mechanized heritage. An elite corp of shock troops, the iron masks of the Blood Pact had spilled Imperial blood in every major action since the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. Their ruthlessness and cunning were equally notorious throughout the Chaos armada.

The Fallen of Ferval mobilized under calls from their officer cadre—five regiments, with movements and protocol virtually unchanged since their initial service in the Imperial Guard. Their leader, Arch-General Mathias Karkiar, had fought in several actions throughout the Novaguard Sector, but was still eager to prove his regiments' worth to the Blood Reaver on Marathon.

A host of undead infantry moved onto the field in a herd, kept in formation by Nurgle-worshipping psi-whips. Their heads covered in receptor cords, the psi-whips moved alongside the formation, sending mental commands to the zombie army.

Death Dancer assassins moved through the press of troops, their movements lithe and fluid. Blades adorned their lightly armored bodies, and their skin shined with designs in spilt blood. Many cut themselves as they moved, letting out little gasps of pleasure.

One in particular found her way to Adamus's side. The young War Captain stood at the edge of the stadium seating, watching the landings with his arms crossed. The Death Dancer got to within three feet of him before he spun and caught her in a choke-hold.

"Liandra," he greeted.

She smiled, unable to speak, and he let her go. The assassin rubbed her throat, enjoying the sting. "Good to see you, too. How long has it been?"

"Twenty-three years," Adamus replied. "Cadia."

"So you do remember that," she cooed, sliding up alongside him, arms sliding across his armor. The ridges in his warplate cut her skin. "I thought you Space Marines weren't so thoughtful."

Adamus didn't look at her. "If you want me to help in some ritual again, Liandra, forget it."

"What, you don't worship our mother any more?" Her voice was mocking. Adamus thought about breaking her spine, but didn't. He knew she would like it.

Instead, he spoke. "She is not my mother."

Liandra's face lost its playfulness. "Bastard! You bastard! You went to Khorne, didn't you? I always knew you were low, but—"

"Nor is the Blood God my father." Adamus looked at her. "I have no god, woman. I wear no sign upon my skin. To worship detracts from our cause. I will not waste time appeasing the gods with puny sacrifices and rituals. To them, every Imperial I kill should be salute enough."

Liandra scowled. "You are not the man I used to know."

"That is because you are an idiot," Adamus said. "Leave, Liandra, or I will kill you."

As the Death Dancer faded away into the crowd, Drake took her place. "War Captain, the spectators are dead, and the beastmen are landed. Orders for Omnios?"

"Drop the shield," Adamus said. "And bring my Thunderhawk down. I need to speak with the Blood Reaver."

Minutes later, the energy barrier around the Grand Stadium dropped, and the armies of Chaos spilled into the streets of the Central Acropolis.

(' ')

Huron Blackheart dropped High Governor Thedro's head on the desk, right next to the destroyed bodies of his co-manipulators, before linking with the Corsair-wide vox channel.

"Thedro is dead! High Command is ours!"

His red Corsairs, stationed throughout the three towers, were still in the midst of purging the Imperials , room by room, hall by hall, when his announcement rang out. They heard it, and the towers vibrated with their cheering.

In the command chambers, a Corsair stepped up to his lord's side.

"Honored Blood Reaver, we have secured the vox-sponder transmission and relay center," he said.

To Blackheart, the implication was clear. "Do it," he replied, and the Corsair stepped to the side, giving an order through his helmet comm.

A minute later, and all Imperial vox-caster frequencies were clogged with a raging tirade of expletives, prayers to unholy gods, and threats of horrible death.

(' ')

Corporal Lang yanked his headset off and screamed. The words he had heard in the first seconds of the call made him sick. He stumbled and fell, cupping both hands to his lips to keep from vomiting, and blood ran from his nostrils.

In the grand scheme, this was the least violent reaction to the cacophony experienced in the Acropolis.

Bile flooded Lang's mouth, and he let it out onto the pavement slowly, as he regained some composure.

"Sir," he stammered, "Sir, I believe the vox is down."

Colonel Rakatev let loose a burst of lasfire and dropped down behind the burning car he shared with Lang, and Troopers Croal and Zaitiv. He pulled the empty cell out, slammed another in, and smacked the housing until the ammo-counter read full again. Damn thing was always screwing with him.

"What was that?" he shouted over the bullets pounding into the car.

"Vox is down, sir!"

"Huh? That doesn't make sense—" Rakatev reached for his microbead to flick it on.

Lang grabbed his arm. "Sir, you don't want to do that."

Rakatev looked at his voxman. Blood dribbled over Lang's lips, and vomit was spattered across his flak vest. His face was pale, and the augmetic hand he had placed on Rakatev's arm was twitching, its nerve-receptors trying to cope with the residual effects of a minor seizure.

"Well," Rakatev muttered, "I suppose I don't."

Across the street, someone opened fire with an autocannon. Thick, flat-headed tungsten slammed into the car, shaking it like hell. A few punched through, kicking dust out of the sidewalk and the building behind it, and Rakatev ducked down, pulling Lang with him. A burst cut through the hood of the vehicle and caught Zaitiv in the chest, punching him up and onto his back, dead. Trooper Croal grabbed at his friend, screaming his name, and took a round in the back of the head. His helmet, still wet with the remains of his skull, skittered across the pavement.

"Bloody hell," Rakatev muttered.

This whole day had gone down the crapper. The landings at the Grand Stadium had let Chaos ground troops loose in the streets. Rakatev's regiment was on its way to the Munitorium district to retrieve their Chimeras when a group of hostiles hit them in the Mall.

They were Blood Pact, thought Rakatev. No other Chaos troop was this effective, or could pull off this level of coordination.

Rakatev rotated onto his back and looked down the street to where Captain Chernov's platoon was moving up in their wake. "Chernov! No vox anymore! Turn off your microbead!"

"Yes, Colonel!"

"And hit that autocannon while you're at it!"

"Yes, Colonel!"

Chernov was a good officer, and used his platoon like it was a part of him. He moved a squad to the far side of the street under the cover of a las-barrage, and drew the autocannon's fire to his own position. The stream of bullets whickered down from the street-top and hammered into the dump truck next to Chernov, but the captain didn't flinch. He'd come a long way from the plasma gunner he'd been when he joined the regiment on Dancer.

"Grenades! Now!"

The squad he'd diverged obeyed. Chernov's distraction had let them move undetected, and in the autocannon's blind spot. By now they had moved up the opposite sidewalk into position next to the storefront the autocannon's crew was using as a bunker. The rest of the squad gave their explosives to Trooper Ezlan, the point man. Ezlan primed and threw them one after the other, each one thumping into the store's floor.

The autocannon fire stopped as the crew saw the grenades, and ten seconds later, the storefront exploded. Bricks and pieces of wood blasted across the street, and a helmet rolled to a stop at Rakatev's feet. It stared at him with a hook-nosed visor made of blood-red iron.

Blood Pact. Rakatev kicked the helmet away.

"Now what?" asked Chernov. The hairy captain picked Rakatev up off the pavement before doing the same for Lang. At the latter, he paused for a second. "What's wrong, Irving?"

Lang looked queasy again, and doubled over to throw up in a drain pipe.

"The Red Corsairs hit the vox with a tirade," Rakatev answered for him. "Bad for a man's health."

Chernov laughed and gestured at the city around. "To be truthful, being penned down in here isn't much healthier. It's getting pretty hairy in the rear, sir."

The rearguard was Major Ornov's position. Rakatev frowned. "What's wrong?"

"They're getting hit hard," Chernov replied. "Last word was Ornov's down and they're all holed up in some parking garage." Chernov leaned against the tattered car and lit a cigarette, motioning to one of his sergeants to fan out and search the district. He set his plasma gun on the hood. "We can't make it on foot, boss, and we keep pressing for the Munitorium district and we'll be dead in an hour."

"I know," Rakatev muttered. He thought for a minute. "We'll need to pull back to the Scholam."

"The Scholam Progenium?" Chernov started. "The Commissar Factory?"

"The Commissar _Island_," Rakatev corrected. "It's clear we're overrun. The only thing we can do now is defend ourselves until help arrives. Now, Emperor willing that help comes soon, the best place to weather a siege is on the Schola, where the only route of attack comes down the same bridge we will. Make sense?"

"Sure, sure, it makes sense," Chernov replied. "But how're we supposed to get there? Walking won't work. We'll be overrun before we get there."

Rakatev didn't have an answer for that, but Lang did. The voxman pointed up the street to the dump truck Chernov had hidden behind during the firefight. "That's a city vehicle, so there have to be more of them somewhere. Couldn't we just use those?"

Rakatev and Chernov looked at the corporal, then at each other.

"Yeah, Lang," Rakatev said, clapping his voxman on the shoulder, "I think we could."

(' ')

The Marathon 1st Infantry Regiment, the 'Saluted', was the only other armed Imperial Guard force in the Central Acropolis at the time of the attacks. Unlike the 42nd Mechanized, the Saluted was a regiment more well known, and had been housed in greater accommodations than Rakatev's lot. Its commanding officer was Colonel Hurtado Voysolt, a veteran of several conflicts throughout the sector war and abroad. Voysolt was an educated man, and knew the Archenemy as well as any man who studied tactical texts as a matter of habit. On an intellectual level, he could understand the importance of the city's largest structures and districts to any attacking army, and on a spiritual level, he felt obligated to take back one in particular: the District of the Cult Imperialis.

Forming his men, over two thousand in all, into their Chimera personnel carriers, Voysolt moved his regiment from their boarding quarters toward the Cult District in a standard spearhead push with a cocked right flank. When engagements started, the right flank under Voysolt's second, a Major Haverson, would double its advance speed and encircle the enemy. After that, the crossfire would be a formality.

The plan would have worked against any number of Chaos regulars. If they had been fighting Traitor Astartes, it still would have held promise against a chapter like the Red Corsairs, or even the Black Legion.

But they were fighting World Eaters. Kharn the Betrayer's World Eaters.

The Saluted never stood a chance.

When Voysolt realized this, he picked up the vox horn to tell Haverson, to redirect the plan of attack, and consolidate their losses. The vox screamed in his ear. Voysolt lost his balance and fell from his command vehicle where he was crushed under its treads.

Minutes Later

Kharn axed his way through the Chimera's side paneling and pulled himself inside. He laid into the crew, ignoring the lasfire, and roared as blood splashed across the bench seats. A man swung his lasgun like a club, the butt banging off Kharn's head. Gorechild came down and cut Haverson's arm off at the elbow. He died at the Betrayer's feet, watching as the rest of his men fell to the grinding axe.

The driver was the last to die, and in his final moments, set the Chimera on a veering turn. The vehicle collided with another, steel smashing steel, and both toppled into a wall before exploding.

Kharn marched clear of the wreckage, laughing through his breathe grille. All around the district, the Imperial charge was being finished off, and behind him, the landers of the Dark Mechanicus were making their final approach runs into the destroyed cathedral grounds.

(' ')

A blackened Thunderhawk tore over the Cult District, and from its open ramp, Adamus Luchance watched the first of the titans walk from its lander. It was an Imperator, 55 meters of city-crushing firepower. It was called the _Claw of the Omnisiah_, and it would crush the Acropolis beneath its tread.

The Thunderhawk moved on, and Adamus watched as the skyways whipped by below. The elevated thoroughfares were a tide of fleeing civilians flowing around hardpoints of Chaos forces caught in the tide. Adamus recognized these bastions as Blood Pact tanks scything down the runners. The civilians smart enough to go below the skyways were killed in the gardens, run down by Adamus's own beastmen hordes.

"We can keep them in line, right?" he asked to his right. Omnios nodded, silent. "You know, it wouldn't kill you to talk."

The sorcerer stared at him. Adamus stared back.

"Okay," sighed the War Captain, "whatever."

The Thunderhawk settled onto the western landing pad of Marathon High Command proper and Adamus stepped out, followed by his command retinue. A Corsair led them inside, through halls scorched by promethium and spattered with dried gore. From the lower levels, Adamus could still hear residual bolter shots; cleanup.

Blackheart greeted him upon entering the control room. It was a broad space, centered by a raised dais ten meters across. The Blood Reaver stood upon it, looking out across the city through the shattered remains of a stained glass window. Adamus had no clue as to what the window had depicted before, but now it served as a carpet upon which servants of the Corsairs were placing tacticas equipment and cogitators. Evidently, Blackheart meant to make this his headquarters for a while.

"We will not be here long," said the Blood Reaver, throwing Adamus's theory out the window. "How were things in your quadrant?"

"No complaints," Adamus said, leaning on the brass railing that ran the circumference of the dais.

"Your vessel distinguished itself in the void war," Blackheart said. "It took out both orbital defense stations and a loyal strike cruiser of equal tonnage to itself. None of my ships even got a shot."

He grinned sidelong at Adamus. "Is there something special about that ship?"

"Nothing more than a fearful crew," Adamus replied. This got a laugh out of Blackheart, during which the War Captain jumped back into his own mind. "_Sandalphon_, what did you kill?"

"Everything." Adamus could feel the honesty in the daemon's voice. And the hatred. "The orbital lanes are ours. Should I kill the World Eaters' ship next?"

"No," Adamus replied. "Just keep calm."

"I'm a Khornite Bloodletter possessing a strike cruiser, master. I don't do calm."

"Well, try harder."

Adamus jumped back into the conversation just as Blackheart made it to the next phase of operations. "We'll move out of the city come daybreak to begin the assault on the Sons of Marathon fortress monastery."

"Should I bring my beastmen?" Adamus asked.

"No," Blackheart said, "They should stay here to keep the city held. I'm sure there will be dissenters and the like left over, but I cannot risk orbital bombardment."

Adamus understood that. In the event of a massed Imperial reclamation, the Acropolis would be necessary to mount a defensive campaign. Of course, that was assuming that any of the Chaos coalition would stay with Blackheart in that event. Already, Adamus was thinking how long he would ally himself with the Blood Reaver of the Maelstrom. It was good war making, sure, but he had his doubts.

There was no need to show them, though. "You have my alliance, Lord Blackheart," he said.

Blackheart nodded. He gestured to the mountains beyond the Acropolis, and the fortress that resided there, pretending to hold it in his power claw.

"Come daybreak, it will be ours," he said. The shears of the claw snapped shut with a metallic ting.

(' ')

Colonel Rakatev swung down from the passenger door, his boots hitting the running board and then the rockcrete of the bridge. Hands held up, he stepped around the front of the dump truck and waited for the two sentries to walk out to him. One was taller, more muscled, while the other was pudgy and short. They were little more than kids, but they held their lasguns correctly, so Rakatev didn't judge them.

"Who are you?" the larger one asked.

"Colonel Rakatev, Marathon 42nd Mechanized," he said. "We need to be let in and I need to speak with your commanding officer—"

"Where's your tanks?"

Rakatev blinked. "What?"

"Your tanks!" The pudgy one pointed his gun at the line of dump trucks. "Those aren't tanks!"

"Our vehicles were impounded and we—"

"You should have tanks!"

"Oh, for the love of Terra." Rakatev started forward, reaching out to the kid. "Look, we couldn't get to our vehicles—"

The lasgun's butt smashed into his groin. Pain shot through his pelvis, and Rakatev fell to the ground. The pudgy kid started kicking him.

"Die, traitorous dog! Die at the hands of the Scholam's Finest!"

The taller and older child pulled the pudgy one off of Rakatev. "Calm down, Sal! Calm down!" He threw the little kid aside and helped Rakatev to his feet. "Sorry, Colonel. Sal's just a little jumpy. You all right?"

"Yeah, I've had worse." Rakatev stood up straight and adjusted his eyepatch. "What's your name, son?"

"Roep, sir. Cald Roep, senior Commissar Cadet."

A little non-pepped to be a Commissar Cadet, Rakatev thought, then said, "Roep, the Acropolis is screwed. We need asylum here, otherwise we'll be overrun and gunned down. Can you help us?"

"Yes, sir. I'll open the gate."

Rakatev thanked him and got back into the dump truck. Slamming the door, he turned to Lang. "He's letting us in."

"I gathered that. Good fighting, sir."

"Shut up, Lang."

"No, really. You showed him what for."

"Shut _up_, Lang."

"Yes, sir."

Lang put the truck in gear and guided it in through the gate where he pulled off to the side. Rakatev watched as the rest of the convoy followed, making its way into the assembly yard.

He sat back and sighed. The regiment was secure, and God-Emperor willing, safe for the next few days. They could hold out here for a while, but without support, they would die along with the rest of the planet. Chances were the astropathicus was destroyed, so there was no chance of getting a message out that way, leaving them down to one possible salvation: the Battle Saint, due to arrive in one standard week.

Rakatev just hoped they could last that long.

**Author's Note: This is the new arc, and it is an indicator of how I want to run this story in the future. Everything on Marathon is a new concept, and I've had to built the world from the ground up. I've begun filling a notebook with prewriting for this arc, and I know everything that will happen before I write the chapter. Dialogue and minor characters (like the assassin and the two kids at the end and Chernov being a major...) still pop up spontaneously, but the overall events are known to me. It's all very boring and writer-centric, so I won't talk about it further, but I hope that the degree of precision in what I'm trying to do will emphasize the scale of the conflicts that are to come not only in this arc, but in all the others to come.**

**Please tell me if it's working or not.**

**The Dogs will show up next chapter. I kept them out of this consciously, to show the events on Marathon before they arrive with 7,000 power armored asskickers and get to clashing with the Traitor Astartes. I hope that wasn't a big downer.**

**See you next weekend.**


	47. Chapter 47: Marathon: Dog Day Afternoon

_Fshwambamfamf!_

Dimitri blinked away the dream-like star spots from his vision and arrived in a horrible, vivid reality. The Central Acropolis, the city of his birth, was in ruins. They had arrived in the Plaza of Heroes before the High Command complex, and from there, Dimitri could see the destruction clearly. One of the command towers had fallen into its twin, and remained there, leaning in a shamble of stressed steel. Smoke filled the air, palling from a hundred thousand smaller fires spread across the districts. The world was grey, and the sounds of small arms and artillery drifting in from the distance.

"Well, Jax," Dimitri said, choking back the emotion in his throat, "It would appear that your dream was correct. We were right to bring the entire Legion."

"Yeah." Nearby, Jax took his hand off Yevina Cardigan's shoulder and looked around. He drew his Impaler from his back and racked the bolt. "Manker, get the boys spread out. I want a report on just what the fuck happened here."

The Kriegan general nodded and got to work, walking away with his retinue of black armored soldiers. Dimitri heard Manker's orders over the master channel, issued to the individual company commanders, but he didn't register them. Nor did he register the movement as the Dogs of War mobilized. He could barely think, let alone be expected to figure things out.

"Dimitri?"

The equerry looked up. Yevina was standing next to him. She held her Impaler one handed; the other was on his shoulder. Dimitri didn't miss the irony in it.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Your eyes are watery."

"There's ash in the air." Dimitri slammed his helmet on and pushed past her. "Excuse me."

Yevina watched him go and dropped her hand to her side. Servos groaned and Animal Mother appeared next to her.

"It's okay," said her bodyguard. "He didn't mean anything by it."

Yevina shook her head. "That's the problem, Casey. He never means anything when it comes to me."

Behind his visor, Animal Mother's eyes narrowed. Throughout their time together, he had taken a liking to Yevina Cardigan. At first they'd been friends, but now, he was surprised to feel so angry at Dimitri for ignoring her. Did that mean he liked her more than he had initially thought? Animal found that he didn't think that would be so bad.

Tentatively, he set his hand on her back. He hoped it was reassuring. The neo-steel clinked together. He was still searching for something good to say when the fighting started.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 47: The Fall of Marathon: Part 2: Dog Day Afternoon_

The Plaza of Heroes was a large space, but with just over 7,000 power armored soldiers, and the five hundred Tallarn vulture hoverbikes, the Dogs of War had filled it to the brim. In the immediate aftermath of the teleportation, General Manker was busy just organizing the Legion to a proper dispersal formation. It was imperative that the Dogs spread out from their tightly-packed jump formation. In this way, shoved shoulder-to-shoulder, they were completely vulnerable to enemy attack.

Manker knew it, and so did the Blood Pact mortar teams watching the Plaza.

Positioned atop buildings all around the area, the Blood Pact troopers took three minutes to zero in their weapons before launching. The Dogs heard the hollow thump-pop of mortar ignition, and had just begun to respond when the first shells landed in their midst.

* * *

Colonel Kellan Thade heard the whistling incoming and felt the shiver along his spine that told him from decades of Guard experience since his time as a Whiteshield to find the nearest ground and slam his belly into it. It hurt to resist that urge, but he did so. The first of the mortars slammed into the brickwork next to his foot. Metal shrapnel and broken tile spanged from his armor. Thade stumbled and caught himself on Trooper Hale's shoulder guard.

"You drunk, Colonel?" Hale asked.

"Not for a couple of weeks, Trooper," Thade shot back. He blinked his comm. active. "Cadian Company, discern incoming trajectories and return fire!"

* * *

Across the Plaza, the rest of the company commanders gave similar orders, and in a moment, a hail of spikes were chasing into the building edges. Steel rent and glass shattered, and in places, the mortar teams too close to windows or roof ledges were cut down. The rest pulled back from the shelling, not from fear, but from knowing.

Something else was about to come down on the Imperials, and only one person outside the Blood Pact realized it.

* * *

"We're about to be hit by infantry," said Colonel Tyryr.

Sergeant Fallar reloaded his Impaler. "How do you figure?"

"I can feel it," she replied.

Tyryr's statement wasn't some allusion to a kind of premonition, but rather an indicator of a much more physical reaction. To a Mordant, 'feeling' something was a literal idea. Known for excellence in tunnel warfare, the Mordant Acid Dogs brought a certain skill set to the Legion. In this case, Tyryr was referring to the ability to feel vibrations in ground surfaces, useful in tunnel warfare for tracking enemies.

Fallar felt for a moment, and through the soles of his boots, even past the constant thrum of his active CMC armor, he could sense the shift.

"That feels like tanks, Ana," he said.

"No, Darv," she replied, looking off down an avenue that fed into the Plaza. "It's just a shitload of infantry. Acid Dogs: incoming foot traffic on the left! Go live and go hard!"

The Mordant guns swung around just in time to intercept the first wave of beastmen.

* * *

The beastmen slammed into the Dogs of War formation hard and fast, driving a spearhead deep into the Legion's heart. They were huge, varied, ghastly creatures, with the strength of the Astartes and the brutality of the orks, and as the Mordant quickly discovered, they meant business.

Ana Tyryr slammed into the plaza floor, her armored back cracking the ceramic tile. Tyryr growled at the pain, blinking away damage reports from her visor. The beastman drew back to brain her with an axe, she bunched up and kicked him in the face. The servo strength of her suit snapped the monster's head around and dazed him, giving Tyryr the time she needed to whip her Impaler into line and open fire. Spikes punched flesh and blood spattered across Tyryr's armor. She stood up and kicked the squirming beastman down, crushing its head, before retargeting.

Around her, the Acid Dogs fought with all the tunnel-fighting rabidity that had given them the armor honors in the first place. There was no finesse, no close range artistry, just hateful rage and vicious killing. Each Mordant soldier carried a combat knife, long and serrated, called a combi-switch. Blade drills had been standard practice for the Acid Dogs from day one of the regiment, and in this close-in slaughter, these combi-switches came out in numbers.

Sergeant Fallar was near her, laying about with his Impaler like a club, shooting and hitting with every movement. A beastman ran for him, its dog face roaring. Fallar spun, smashed it across the snout with his rifle, punched it in the throat, and gored it in the neck with his combat knife. It wasn't a combi-switch, but a much larger, scarier blade, more cleaver than knife. The beastman growled, delivering failing bodyblows to Fallar before it realized it was dead and fell to the ground.

Tyryr fought her way over to Fallar, reloaded her rifle, and stood beside him. "Back-to-back, Darv?"

He smiled. "Absolutely, ma'am."

They formed up, back-to-back, and opened fire, clearing a bolt-hole in the middle of the swarming tide of hair, spit and blood. The Impaler's rate of fire kept the beastmen at bay in an area just around them, drawing attention from nearby troopers to deal with the Acid Dogs' command section.

Fallar's rifle ran dry and he hurled his knife end for end into a beastman's eye socket. Brackish blood sprayed into the air, and the beastman dropped back, grabbing at the hilt dug into its hairy flesh. Fallar swapped magazines.

"Ana, I think we need help," he shouted.

The beastman pried the knife from its neck and started to stand. It had got halfway up when a concussive grenade detonated its head, neck, and most of the rest of its upper body. Blood hit the ground, burning where it touched from the incendiary properties of the grenade.

Colonel Tyryr looked back at the shooter. "Darv, I think we have it."

Clad in titanic marauder warplate, Colonel Karl Brusak of the 5th Company Mordian Dogs trudged up to the front. Behind him, the rest of his marauders were firing, their forearm weapon mounts spitting into the fray. A beastman ran at the Mordian colonel, firing with a blocky solid-slug machinegun. Brusak swung an arm, knocking the creature away with its neck broken.

"Mordians, form ranks and repel!" he shouted. "Primary cadence firing! Turn the melee back on them! For Mordia! For the Emperor!"

"_For Mordia! For the Emperor!"_

* * *

Just as the Mordians of 5th Company and the Mordant of 6th got the eastern flank of the Plaza secured, another front opened up to the north as a wave of Blood Pact infantry slammed into the Legion. The Chaos troopers moved in with care, from cover-point to cover-point, the leading edge of an armored attack. Tanks, blood-red AT100s and Leman Russ variants, moved down the exit thoroughfare from the skyway and into the narrow corridors that led to the Plaza proper. They fired as they moved, and shells slammed down amongst the Dog lines.

These Dogs in particular were from 2nd Company, of the Armageddon variety. A shell landed at the heart of the company, annihilating two Dogs with a point-blank detonation and wounding another three. Even the heavy CMC armor couldn't protect against that kind of firepower.

Colonel Hawke didn't care, and ordered his men forward into the streets. He wasn't about to sit put and get shelled to death. His Dogs moved up by platoon, spreading out and engaging the Blood Pacters. Spikes and lasblasts zipped back and forth across the streets, and the Blood Pact began to drop. Hawke's Dogs took cover against the tanks, and moved up in concert, staggering their advances, creeping closer to the tanks. In minutes, the first of them would be in range of the enemy armor. Their under-slung RPG launchers would take care of the rest.

Hawke stayed with them, right alongside first platoon. He dropped to cover behind a chunk of upturned rockcrete and opened fire. His spikes punched down the avenue and struck a group of Blood Pact trying to collapse a mortar tube. Evidently caught up in the Dogs' counter-attack, they wanted nothing to do with the defense, and were trying to pull out. It was a sound idea, but they died all the same.

A tank shell went off to Hawke's right. He ignored it and answered a blinking comm. rune. "Two-Lead, go ahead."

"Two-Lead, this is First. Status of counter-advance?"

Hawke heard a hint of approval in General Manker's voice, and allowed himself a small grin as he replied. "Proceeding, First. We're encountering armored resistance, but nothing we can't handle."

The trooper next to Hawke lost his head from a hotshot lasround to the weak neck joint. The body smashed into the avenue, limbs jerking from residual impulses sent into the active armor.

"And they've learned how to hurt us," Hawke added. "Sir, requesting support to repel the attack."

"Granted. Rerouting 4th Company."

* * *

Raider-Colonel Mondus Arad listened to the order, replied in kind, and opened up a channel to his second. "Avi, from up the ranks and follow me in."

Next to Arad, the major sergeant sat up in his saddle. "What's the attack plan, sir?"

"Sweeping strikes to their flank and rearguard." Arad pointed over the prow fork of his vulture, indicating the street layout before them. "We'll use that avenue as our prime-channel, then break along it and strike by prongs. One prong will hit the skyway access in the very rear, while another cuts their formation in half."

"Permission to lead the halving strike," Avi said.

"No, no, you're leading the rear strike."

"But sir—"

"No, Avi. Everything hinges on the rear strike. It's imperative to cut off the enemy's channel of reinforcement." Arad looked at his second. "I need you to do it, Avi. I'll handle the distraction."

Avi nodded, slowly, and engaged his vulture's engines. They whined up in pitch, and he looked at Arad. "Yes, Raider-Colonel." He raised a hand and moved it in a circlular chop. Around their quadrant of the Plaza, the Tallarn of 4th Company engaged their vultures. A growing thrum filled the air.

Avi looked back at his commanding officer. "Vulture Raiders ready for attack, Raider-Colonel."

"Right, then," Arad said, gunning his throttle, "Let's show these sand-blasted pricks what it means to fight the Tallarn."

* * *

"The north front is secure," Manker reported. "Colonel Arad's forces have bisected the enemy and delayed their advance for the moment, and the eastern flank is holding under the Mordians and the Mordant."

"Just holding?" Jax asked.

"Yes, Battle Saint. The enemy is unwilling to fall back."

"Well, we'll see about that." Jax started forward, past his command squad. "Manker, bring your boys with me! Dimitri, call Setsui and tell him to get his jumpjetting reaper-ass in gear! We need him!"

Dimitri was about to respond when the already damaged High Command tower finally came down. Steel groaned as the tower came down, slamming into the Plaza of Heroes with a thunderclap that sent tremors throughout the district. Roughly half of the 7th Company Zuven Dogs was caught beneath it when it came down, and very few of those trapped beneath it lived through the collapse. Amongst the dead was Colonel Eormel, crushed in his armor by an eighty-five ton support strut.

Command was redirected to Major Melfield, who inherited the panic and confusion the destruction had sewn throughout the Zuven ranks. Melfield didn't have long to deal with it, though, as he, the rest of first platoon, and the remainder of the entire company was destroyed in a brilliant flare of punishing force.

Dimitri blinked away the sunspots from his eyes and saw the vital sigils of 7th Company wink out across his HUD. Looking up, he saw why.

Above them, standing where the third command tower had once been, the Imperator Titan looked down at them. The hellstorm cannon in place of its right arm billowed smoke from its recent discharge, and steaming coolant bled from its exhaust ports onto the battlefield.

Part of Dimitri wanted to rationalize what had happened, and come up with a solution to the problem at hand. Another part of him saw that as a silly and largely impossible from his current standpoint.

Dimitri Vlasna ignored both ideas, and instead chose to scream.

"Titan! Titan! There's a Titan!"

Motes of light collated along the hellstorm cannon's length. It swung round in line with the Dogs of War command section, unfathomable energies building down its colossal maw. The glow cut through the smoke of the tower's collapse, and Dimitri stared at it, transfixed.

He was still staring when a flash blinded him.

* * *

1st Company was outside the Plaza when the tower came down, fighting along a secondary approach ramp onto the skyway. Manker had told Thade specifically that the Legion needed a cleared entryway onto the skyway, and the Cadian colonel had given him exactly that. 1st Company cleared the ramp in under ten minutes, just in time for the rest of the Legion to move up.

Thade's men were a ways past the entrance ramp, on the skyway itself, and Thade had stopped them to wait for the rest of the Dogs to catch up. He was still waiting when Trooper Hale came to a stop beside him.

"Colonel, there's—"

"It wouldn't hurt to salute me, Hale." The Whiteshield gave him a half-assed gesture. "That's better. Now, what's this you're stuttering about?"

"There's something you should see up ahead, sir."

Thade followed Hale to the front, and pushed his way through the press of armored bodies to the very leading edge. In front of him, straddling a row of crushed cars, sat a Baneblade super heavy tank. It was impressive, so much that Thade didn't immediately register the horde of Leman Russ battle tanks squatting behind it.

"What the hell?" Thade asked.

The Baneblade's command hatch popped open, and a man stood up and waved to him. "Come on, you bastard! Get your people over here or you're dead!"

"What the hell?" Thade repeated.

* * *

The flash came from Jax, who after seeing the destruction the Titan's gun could produce, decided that it couldn't be allowed to do so again. He put everything he had into the blast, drawing from the last dregs of what energy he had used to execute the mass-teleportation, and knocked the massive god-machine back a step. A footpad the size of a battle tank slammed into the avenue behind the plaza, crushing a storefront. The Titan groaned, its very structure frustrated with the way it was forced to compensate for Jax's blow. The hellstorm cannon fired, but the shot went wide, blasting a hole through another of the command towers. Glass and molten steel rained down from the damaged tower section, and the structure began to list, groaning.

"It's coming down!" Jax shouted. "Clear the area!"

"The Titan?" Dimitri shouted. He was cupping his visor with his hands.

"What? Hell no! The tower, Dimitri!"

"I heard it fire! Are we dead?"

"No! Move!" Jax grabbed Dimitri by the arm and started hauling him across the Plaza. "Manker, get everyone moving! Get everyone to the other end! Head for that highway!"

"They're called skyways…" Dimitri muttered.

Jax ignored him, focusing entirely on running. It took a lot of willpower to keep from passing out. That last blat had really taken it out of him. Forcing that much energy through his body wasn't healthy, and the Confederate felt like he had used some of his own life force to channel the attack. Pain blistered across his forehead, and his vision blanked for a second. Losing balance, he stumbled, crushed a memorial plinth with names carved into it, and smashed into the ground.

He wasn't there for long. In his half-awake state, he felt himself being lifted from the ground and into the air. He looked up and saw a mosaic face staring back at him, set around an array of pict-capture lenses.

"**I have you, Battle Saint," **said Tarrius. **"Menshaw, Sternev, load the Equerry onto my back. I believe he has been blinded."**

Jax pointed at the tower. "It's coming down, Tarrius." He tried not to slur his words, but failed. "You gotta go, man."

"What's coming down!" Dimitri shouted from the dreadnought's back.

"Shut up, Dimitri," Jax mumbled weakly.

Tarrius rotated and looked to Manker. The Kriegan was running with his Blackened Guard, beating a retreat across the courtyard. Beyond them, the Mordant and Mordian units were pulling out as well. All around, the Plaza was being churned by the Imperator's smaller deck weapons.

"**General, where are we headed?"**

"The skyway!" Manker replied. "Head for the skyway!"

Tarrius turned back to Menshaw and Sternev. **"My friends, I believe you may need transport as well. Hold on to my feet."**

"All right!" Sternev said, doing so happily. Menshaw did so as well, but after a moment.

"This is degrading," he grumbled.

Tarrius ignored him and set out across the Plaza, piston legs thundering on the tile.

**Author's Note: And now the Dogs are on-planet and caught in the same shitstorm as everybody else. Fun times, huh?**

**I don't really have much else to say here. I mean, I could tell you why this chapter is almost 3,000 words shorter than the one before it, but that involves tedious plot structure and a tale about how I had to write a ten-page short story from scratch to final draft in seventy-two hours, and how that cut in on my writing time. Thankfully, the obstruction actually helped out and thanks to constricting my time this week, I'll get to do something a little more in depth for next week's chapter.**

**I'm trying to flesh out the new characters as much as I can, or in the case of the Zuven guy, kill them. The rest, I hope, have formed as characters in your heads by now, and if not, they will by the end of this arc. I killed the Zuven guy for a good reason, though, not just because I didn't care about him. I want it to be apparent that the Dogs aren't invincible. They can and will die, because that's what happens to soldiers, and it's called Warhammer for a reason.**

**Anyway, more stuff next time.**

**Ave Imperator.**

**Thanks for all the reviews on that last chapter in particular. I'm really glad you guys dig the new focus I'm trying to bring to the story.**


	48. Chapter 48: Marathon: The Blade of Bane

_**Waterdown Base, nine kilometers north of the Central Acropolis, Planet Marathon, one week before the arrival of the Dogs of War.**_

Colonel Sergio Tamdrake liked to think of himself in a particular light, a light that showed him for what he was: a devout citizen of Marathon, of the Imperium, and a soldier of the Imperial Guard. He was fair to his subordinates, uncompromising in the face of his enemies, and faithful to the Imperial Creed of the God-Emperor. He lived as he thought any good man should, acted as he thought a soldier should, and expected others to do the same. Anyone who failed to live up to that simple task was, in the mind of Colonel Sergio Tamdrake, undeserving of his respect.

And right now, General Harold Gurmund was failing spectacularly.

Tamdrake burst into the office, the plywood door slamming hard against its wall stopper. "What the hell is this shit!" he shouted, pulling off his helmet and waving it by the strap. "The Acropolis is under attack and you've got the damn gate sealed!"

Gurmund didn't look up from his desk. "We don't know that for sure, Colonel. High Command has yet to vox us with any move orders, and until then, I cannot let you or your regiment leave."

"Have you looked outside?" Tamdrake crossed the room and forced the blinds up. Several kilometers away, he could see the streaks still raining down into the city. "Do you know what those are, General? Those are Astartes drop pods. Chaos Astartes drop pods. I've seen them before, and they can't be anything else." Tamdrake leaned on one of the chairs situated in front of the general's desk. "Sir, the Central Acropolis is under direct attack. The Archenemy has found Marathon. You have to let us go."

Gurmund didn't look at Tamdrake. He didn't look at the window, either, nor at the armies of hell raining down on the Acropolis. Instead, he simply turned in his seat, hands folded on his stomach, and looked to the vox officer huddled at the set in the corner of the room.

"Morrel, any word?"

"No, sir," replied the voxman. "Nothing from High Command at all."

"Well, keep listening." Gurmund had never seen live combat before, and had advanced to his rank through politics and wealthy breeding. He turned to Tamdrake, favoring him as if the colonel had just walked in the door, and smiled genially. "Well, we've got some time to kill. How about a drink, Colonel?"

In frustration, Tamdrake hurled his helmet like a bolo. Levered by the strap, it flew straight at Gurmund, and with the added weight of the clunky boom-mic setup built into its frame, the helmet hit him with a force of about eight kilos. Gurmund's nose broke under the impact and he fell back, his stubby legs kicking up in the air as he keeled over on his back, squirming like an upturned tortoise.

"Tamdrake! Tamdrake, stop right there!" he shouted. But Tamdrake was already gone.

* * *

Trooper Methal was sitting on the rim of the command hatch cleaning the holo mount when he saw Tamdrake returning from the base HQ. The colonel marched along the formed up rows of Leman Russ tanks, his boots sloshing through the ground that the treads had turned to mud.

"Did we get permission, sir?" Methal asked, helping Tamdrake up the side of the vehicle with a free hand.

"Sure we did, Methal. Thing is, the damn gate's broken, so it looks like we're going to have to knock it down."

"Oh," Methal said. "That's weird. What happened to your helmet, sir?"

"Nothing. Get below, son. And hand me your microbead."

"Yes, sir."

Tamdrake fitted the bead into his ear and gave the mic a test thud. "Hello, hello, 75th Armored? This is your commander speaking. How are we feeling this morning so fine?"

A chorus sounded from the tank column behind him, drowning out the engine rumble and backfires. _"Good and ready to kill and die!"_

"Fantastic," Tamdrake replied. "So, here's the thing, lads. Marathon's under attack. It's shocking and it's bad, I know, but we're going to have to live with it. Fact is, we all knew this day might come. We've been too big a thorn in old Blackheart's side for a long time, and this kind of attack was inevitable. But I've led you men for years now, and served in your place for years before that, and I know it as fact that if there is one unit that can save this planet, it's the 75th Armored!"

The cheers came again, but with no cohesion. No, this time it was just madness, the pure, unadulterated roar of bloodlust, of men ready to fight.

Tamdrake threw his fist to the air, and the wind blew his brown hair. "Comrades, sons, warriors of Marathon! Rev your engines and load your cannons! Let your treads quake the enemy's resolve! Let the flare of your cannons spell their doom! Let them remember the day they lost their minds and invaded the Emperor's favorite world!"

The tanks roared, and the ground of Waterdown Base shook under their rumblings. The men were ready to move.

Tamdrake covered his mic and looked down at his driver. "Whiskel? The gate, please."

Whiskel, a small, lean man with tanker goggles too large for his face and a penchant for driving open-hatched to taste the dust, grinned up at him. "With pleasure, sir."

The frame beneath Tamdrake rocked as Whiskel put the vehicle into gear. The engine revved, and Tamdrake felt it in his guts and lungs like the beating of a war drum. The treads engaged, and the whole tank moved forward.

Waterdown Base's primary gate was made of corrugated ceramite and razorwire, and had stood for over forty years. Colonel Tamdrake's _Unstoppable Advance_ knocked it down in a heartbeat, the Baneblade not even so much as slowing at the impact. The guards posted in the sentry towers flanking the gate started shouting and waving their weapons around in a vaguely threatening way. Tamdrake waved at them as they passed, and Whiskel gave the colossal battle tank more gas, powering them out past the perimeter. The rest of the 75th Armored followed them out onto the dirt trackway to the Acropolis.

They were eight kilometers out when a strike of orbital fury lit up the sky behind them. The air split with a thunderclap, and a wash of ozone covered the desert. Sand kicked up around the column of roving armor, filling open hatches and getting in eyes.

Tamdrake rubbed his eyes with his gloved fingertips, and when he was done and could see again, Waterdown Base was gone, with nothing more than a waver of heat and sweltering glassed hardpan in its place.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 48: The Fall of Marathon: Part 3: The Blade of Bane_

_**Arterial Skyway 147, Central Acropolis, Planet Marathon, two hours after the arrival of the Dogs of War.**_

"No survivors?" Jax asked.

The Confederate was laying on the Baneblade's engine grate, soaking up the heat rising from the chugging power plant. He had been doing so for a little over an hour, and so far was feeling much refreshed after his draining encounter with the Titan. Most of the command squad was with him; Yevina and Animal sat up front, Menshaw and Sternev behind on the bumper. Venerable Tarrius was behind all of them, keeping pace with the Baneblade at a steady trot, and Jax hadn't seen Rover since before they teleported. Still, he was sure the awkward specialist was there, somewhere, watching them.

Jax looked back and saw the rest of Tamdrake's 75th Armored moving along the highway. Most of them were Leman Russes, or variants thereof, and all were piled to the brim with passengers in the form of the Dogs of War. The Dogs were heavy in their armor, but that wasn't slowing the advance any, and the column maintained a steady 33kph rate along the skyway. Say what you wanted about the Leman Russ—and Jax often did—but you couldn't call it weak in good confidence.

"No, none," Tamdrake answered. "In fact, besides my boys, the only other surviving resistance is what's holed up in the Scholam."

"And that's where we're headed?" Dimitri asked. The Equerry was sitting further up on the tank, nursing his eyesight back into being. It was slow going, but he could finally discern shapes and light variances. The titan's cannon had really messed him over. "To the Scholam, I mean?"

Tamdrake nodded, then, realizing Dimitri's sight problem, put it into words. "Yes. The little commissars are holding out well, along with a group of mechanized infantry under a guy named Rakatev."

Dimitri looked back at Jax, and could make out the Confederate's arm moving. He guessed that was a thumb's up.

Tamdrake watched the interaction and commented. "Ivan said he knew the two of you. His regiment's supposed to become part of your legion, right?"

"Yup," Jax said, getting to his feet and walking over to the turret. The Baneblade growled under him and he patted the turret. "Sure is an angry machine you got here, Colonel."

"It's sensing something," Tamdrake muttered, feeling the hull with his bare hand. "Equerry, radio your outriders. Tell them to pull off the skyway and take cover, preferably in a worker hab." Tamdrake cupped one of his headset ears and spoke into his mic. "75th, _Unstoppable_'s got a feeling. Disengage from the skyway at the next exit and go to ground. Repeat, concealed positions. No firing without a damn good reason."

The tankers replied and consented to the order immediately, and the Leman Russes followed their father-tank without hesitation. For Dimitri, convincing Arad of the same thing was a little trickier.

"Why?" asked the Tallarn Vultures' commanding officer.

"I don't know," Dimitri replied, "The Baneblade got a feeling or something."

There was a pause from the other end. "4th Lead, do you copy?"

"4th Lead here," Arad replied. "I copy. Sorry, did you say the Baneblade had a _feeling_?"

"Or something," Dimitri said. "Just do it, all right?"

"Affirmative. 4th Company adjusting course."

Half a kilometer ahead, Raider-Colonel Mondus Arad gunned his vulture and pulled off onto an exit ramp. His company followed him, and spread out into the shaded world beneath the skyways. Behind them, the tanks followed suit.

Many Kilometers Away

The glassed crater that had been Waterdown Base had proven quite useful to Marathon's invaders. Positioned at the exact midpoint between the Central Acropolis and the Eternal Peaks mountain range, it was the perfect staging ground for Huron Blackheart's siege of the Sky Fortress, the home of the Sons of Marathon Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.

The Sons were a standard, codex-abiding chapter, with no real distinctive tactics or practices aside from minor deviations from what one might consider normal, if such a term could ever be applied to the super-human Astartes. For all intents and purposes, the Sons were a simple chapter of loyalists. Where they diverged from that simple nature was in just who they were loyal to.

The Sons of Marathon were born the Angels of Novaguard, an avenging chapter of Marines dedicated to slaying all inhumans in the sector of their namesake. It was only when their homeworld was destroyed that they had immigrated to Marathon. In honor of their new hosts, the weakened chapter elected to change its name, and from all accounts they had acclimated quite well.

Adamus Luchance knew all of this, and so tuned out most of Blackheart's speech to the war council.

The council was being held atop a massive, four-legged siege engine as it sat on the debris of Waterdown. Far below, the forces of Chaos were being put to work, digging trenches in all shapes and sizes, from line trenches to supply vanes and ammo dugouts. Self-propelled artillery of both the motorized and daemonic variety settled in amongst the firing pits, with the latter needing to be strapped down by slave crews.

"Does it meet with your approval?" boomed a voice.

Adamus was smiling before he even turned, but it grew as he saw the speaker. "Mettarion," he said, embracing the other warrior.

Delgado Mettarion was an Iron Warrior, a Warsmith, and a Horus Heresy veteran who still remembered the Imperial Palace in flames. He was one of the true chosen of Perturbo and had the resurrections to show it. He wore a suit of heavy Terminator plate in gold and black striping, and totted his industrial hammer over his shoulder as he spoke. Most all the artillery and earthworks below was Mettarion's doing, as was the massive siege engine they held council on.

He was also one of the few people outside the Black Legion that Adamus trusted, or called brother.

"The Eye shines upon me to see you here," Mettarion replied, releasing Adamus from his grip. "I do believe we might make it out alive, this time."

"We do need all the help we can get, with him leading things."

Adamus indicated Blackheart with a nod, but the warlord was too busy hearing himself rant to care. Several of the younger champions in the council cheered. Adamus rolled his eyes.

"Are you still in with those pleasure-gluttons?" Mettarion said, blunt as the hammer he wielded.

Adamus cocked his head to the side. "You're the second person to bring that up since I've been in-theatre. And no, I am currently without a particular lord."

"Then what's that?" Mettarion asked, pointing to the wolf's head etched into Adamus's pectoral.

"That's… different," Adamus said at length. He turned to the vista to the north. "So, what's the plan?"

"We've been bombarding them from afar for seven days now. The simple fact is that their shield will come down under this sustained barrage, and then we'll move in and finish the bastards."

"Iron within," Adamus said, taking advantage of their relationship to use the salute.

"Iron without," Mettarion finished.

He was about to go on when they were interrupted by Kharn the Betrayer. The man marched up to them, swaying on his feet, and growled. His helmet was still on, but Adamus could hear the drool in his words.

"You have the right idea. Blackheart talks too much. Too much talking. Not enough killing. No blood."

Adamus smiled. "Indeed. Right, Delgado? Not enough blood killing, eh?"

"Yes," Mettarion agreed, trying to hide his grin.

Kharn laughed, the sarcasm missing him completely. "Good. Good, you get it. Blood for… for, uhm…"

"The Blood God?" Adamus offered.

"Yes, yes," Kharn nodded rapidly. "Blood for the Blood God!"

The beserker jumped over the side of the siege engine and fell to the ground one hundred meters below. Adamus watched as he ran across the hardpan, screaming unknowable noises into the desert wind.

"At least he's motivated," Mettarion said.

"Yes, for a moron," Adamus agreed.

Below, the artillery kicked up a notch, and shells began detonating against the shimmering form of the Astartes energy shield.

The Central Acropolis

Dimitri leaned against the Baneblade's flank. Here, beneath the skyways, the light conditions were helping him focus his returning vision. It still hurt to move his eyes, and each blink conjured burning after-images on the red of his eyelids, but he was making progress. The skyways formed a kind of canopy and, supported by trunks of rockcrete and steel, made the undercity a shaded area. Pools of sunlight gathered in places or played across buildings with the movement of the sun. The Dogs and their hosts in the 75th armored had been here for an hour.

In the quiet, Dimitri heard why. He could feel it through the grass at his feet, could see it in the way the natural gardens shook, and could hear it in each thumping footfall. The titan was hunting them, and it had brought friends.

Dimitri heard a crackle and looked up. Colonel Tamdrake was on his headset again, speaking with the tank commanders arranged throughout the undercity. When he was done, he looked down at Dimitri.

"They're moving away finally," he said, "We should be back moving in a bit."

Dimitri nodded. When he looked back to the scenery, he was met with the sight of two eyes staring back at him, from very close range.

"Shit," he muttered. "Specialist, how are you?"

Specialist Rover Roverson nodded in return and scampered up the side of the Baneblade. Despite Rover's armor being a flat green, Dimitri had trouble seeing him. He was sure this wasn't due to his eye troubles; even when he was fine, he had trouble seeing Rover when the specialist didn't want to be seen. The shadows, especially the strangely lateral ones here in the undercity, seemed to conceal Rover, becoming an extension of the camo-cloak he wore across his broad, armored shoulders.

"Battle Saint," Rover said.

Jax looked back from where he was talking with Menshaw and Sternev. He had been on his feet for a while now, having replenished his bodily energies from the Baneblade's own exhaust.

"Hey, Rover," he said, shaking with the specialist. "I was wondering when you'd show up."

Rover nodded. "Sorry about that, sir. I should have told you before I moved out on my own."

Jax shook his head. "No need for that. You're the best at what you do. Consider yourself to have my permission from now on to do whatever you think needs doing."

"Thank you, Battle Saint."

"No problem. Now, what's it like out and about?"

Rover unclamped his helmet from its place on his thigh and walked over to the turret. "Colonel Tamdrake, could I borrow your holo-projector for a moment?"

The Marathon colonel, having never met Rover before, handled the moment quite well. "Yes. Trooper Methal, help him out."

"No need for that, Colonel," Rover said, prying off the projector's housing and attaching wires to his helmet. "I know how to work this."

Dimitri finally got onto the Baneblade again and steadied himself on the battle cannon. Jax stepped over to him and touched him on the arm. "How're yer eyes?"

"Fine." Dimitri pointed to Rover. "So, the man can't remember his real name, but he knows how to jury-rig a rare form Baneblade holo-projector?"

Jax shrugged. "I guess, but that ain't what's got me worried."

"Oh?" Dimitri asked.

"Yeah. What's bothering me is how he don't make noise in that armor."

Jax was right. Rover's armor, despite the fusion pack and servos and power-conveyance cables running throughout it, didn't make so much as a hum. When he shifted his weight or moved his feet, he didn't register any sound. The Baneblade even seemed to quiet down as he stepped across its surface.

In the oppressive humidity swell of the undercity, Dimitri suddenly felt very cold.

"There." Rover stepped away from the projector and toggled something in his helmet.

The projector kicked on and rendered a three dimensional image before all atop the tank, showing a scale light model of the Central Acropolis in great detail. Markers appeared across it, ranging from red to green, and Dimitri could make out individual pock-marks in walls.

"I trust this is up to date," Dimitri said, trying to hide how impressed he was.

"As of ten minutes ago, yes, sir," Rover replied. "I've catalogued enemy force-disposition for the entire city."

"Damn," Jax whistled.

Colonel Tamdrake leaned back in his cupola and looked to his adjutant. "Methal, get me a light," he said, knocking an iho-stick from its pack.

Methal did so, handing his commander a lighter. "Can I have on, sir?" he asked.

Tamdrake ignored him. "We need to get this back to the scholam," he told the armored men in front of him. "Between this and your firepower, we can take the Acropolis back."

"Agreed," Dimitri said. "When can we move out? Is the titan gone?"

Tamdrake made a motion to the driver, and the Baneblade coughed to life. He clicked his headset twice, and all along the parkway, the Leman Russes of the 75th Armored kicked into gear.

"Screw the titan," he said. "We're moving now."

**Author's Note: I think a couple of you mentioned the need for the Dogs to have, in your opinions, more than just a butt-ton of infantry, and as such, most of this chapter was just setting up Tamdrake and his supporting characters, and the 75th Armored in general. I know I didn't go through and explain every little facet of their Leman Russes and what variants they are and such, but that'll come later. Regardless, they are my solution. ****Oh, and Baneblades are my favorite thing ever.**

**There wasn't much else in this week's update, but at least there was an update this week. I'm actually proud of how often I update this story. It's kind of impressive, actually. In fact, it's so impressive that I'm going to say the following: I kick ass.**

**Anyway, next time will be a briefy-briefy with some charactering character stuff, and then on to the shooty-shooty, which will then last us to the end of the arc.**

**Oh, and on a different note, I finally learned that my account was set to reject PMs for the past few weeks/months. I don't know why it was like that, but if you tried to PM and it didn't work, it will again now.**


	49. Chapter 49: Marathon: Raid on Com Island

Raider-Colonel Arad led 4th Company across the bridge from the Central Acropolis and was the first to pass through the gates to the Scholam Progenium proper. He made a circle chop with a splayed-fingered hand and his prong moved off the main throughway to allow the rest of the column passage onto the island. Avi followed suit, as did the rest of the prong leaders, and the vultures got clear one by one.

_Unstoppable Advance_ led the way in a minute later, the reverberations of its powerful engine quaking the rockcrete under its colossal treads. Colonel Tamdrake rode in the cupola, one hand resting on a heavy bolter mount, the other on his headset as he directed the vehicles behind into the island safely. The Baneblade pulled up next to Arad and came to a growling stop, its turret blocking out the low evening sun. Arad powered down his vulture and stood, his popping joints going unheard in his thick CMC armor.

"Sir!" he said, snapping off a salute as the Battle Saint jumped down from the tank.

Jax returned the gesture casually. His visor was retracted, and though he was smiling, Arad could see the lines of fatigue around the Confederate's eyes.

"Mondus," he said, "Good lead-in."

Arad nodded. "Thank you, sir."

Jax turned away from Arad and helped Dimitri down from the Baneblade. The Equerry was stumbling, and his wide eyes were blinking rapidly. It was clear he hadn't recovered from his temporary blinding yet, but he wasn't about to put on his helmet.

"Y'know, yer helmet has an image intensifier," Jax said.

Dimitri pulled away from the Confederate's steadying hand. "Whatever. Manker! Where's Manker?"

"Right here."

Dimitri turned and let his eyes focus for a moment, bringing into clarity the two figures who had strode up from the rear echelons of the column. General Manker loomed in his blackened armor, accompanied by the dry khaki plate of an Armageddon Dog, Colonel Hawke. Both men stood helms-on, with their Impalers locked hip-side. Hawke stood at ease, hand on the hilt of his sheathed chainsword, while Manker had his arms folded across his chest. Dimitri had the distinct feeling that both men were glaring at him.

"Good," Dimitri said. "We need to—"

He stopped himself before he could finish ordering around the general in charge of Legion operations. Dimitri took a breath and continued.

"Sorry, Harken. I'm not thinking straight. It's my homeworld and I'm forgetting your job. You understand, right?"

"No," Manker said. "I don't." He grabbed a passing soldier in the livery of a Marathon infantry regiment. "Trooper, where is your immediate superior?"

The trooper knew the answer, but seemed to have lost it in the booming voice of the armored giant holding him by the shoulder. He began to stutter, and managed to point to a figure across the courtyard.

Manker dropped him and marched over to the indicated officer. "Captain!"

Captain Chernov turned from his conversation with a sergeant and saluted Manker. "Can I help you, sir?"

Manker blinked. The captain didn't seem bothered with the size and power he was presented with, and faced Manker like a man. The Kriegan found he liked Chernov.

"What is your name?" Manker asked.

"Chernov, sir," said Chernov.

"And you are with the 42nd Marathon Mechanized Infantry Regiment?"

"Yes, sir."

Manker nodded. "Then I suggest you start showing us just why you were picked for armor honors."

"Well," Chernov said, shifting the weight of his plasma gun under his other arm. The coil had started to burn his armpit. "We've held this island against fourteen attacks in the past week, and to date haven't lost more than a squad of our own strength."

"Enemy losses?" Manker asked.

"Not sure, but we had to start dumping them out the back when the pile under the bridge started sticking out of the water." Chernov paused. "And we're running dry on scavenged ammo."

Manker found that he liked this Chernov man a lot. "Captain, this is Colonel Hawke. I want you to show him the defenses and patrol routines your men have established. Answer any and all questions he may have. Clear?"

"As melted snow, sir," Chernov replied.

Manker walked away, wondering how Chernov's answer made any sense. Coming from the Kriegan experience of brackish, polluted winter weather, the significance of the comment was totally lost on him.

* * *

"Throne of freaking Terra," Rakatev said, his hand jerking Dimitri's arm up and down like an industrial piston. "I never thought I'd see you again."

Dimitri couldn't help grinning. "It's good to see you too, Colonel. It's been too long."

He wasn't lying, either. Dimitri had suddenly found just how much he missed the men of the 42nd Marathon Mechanized Infantry. It had been almost two full years since he had last seen them on Dancer IV, and the familiarity of same-world comrades came back to him instantly. Rakatev and his clipped, Marathon accent only served to highlight how much Dimitri had forgotten about his homeworld.

"Ivan, for Throne's sake. Call me Ivan." Rakatev was still shaking his hand. "Damn but it's good to see you again."

"Yes," Dimitri said. He looked behind Rakatev to the man quietly standing aside, voxcaster strapped to his back. "How have you been, Lang?"

Lang didn't reply, as he was busy with finding where his jaw dropped off to. The adjutant was staring at Dimitri's red armor, and a line of drool had begun to form at the corner of his mouth. Dimitri smiled.

"It's okay, Lang," he said. "You'll get your own soon enough."

"Yeah," said Jax as he stepped into the staff office, ducking through the low doorframe, "But it looks like we've got work to do first."

The men and women around the room, most of them scholam cadets in either commissar-trainee or sororitas-menial fatigues, looked up from their charts and voxsets and dry ration packs and hopeless plights. They stared at the demi-godlike religious figure standing in the doorway, his armored body glowing with latent white energy. Someone fell off their chair, and Lang let out a pitiful squeak.

Jax looked at them. "Who's ready to save the planet?"

Rakatev stopped shaking Dimitri's hand and walked over to Jax. He stopped in front of the Confederate and saluted, back straight, hand crisp. The rest of the staff office followed his example, rising and saluting.

Jax returned the gesture and grinned.

"I'll figure that as a yes, then," he said.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 49: The Fall of Marathon: Part 4: Night Raid on Commissar Island_

The men at the Scholam Progenium welcomed the Dogs of War with a veritable celebration, or as much a celebration as could be mustered during wartime. The garrisoned troopers didn't fire their lasguns in elation, but there was certainly a surplus of happy waving them in the air. Nonsensical whoops of joy were whooped, canine howls were howled, and Imperial hymns hymned, and in little under half an hour, the Dogs had become a natural part of the home team.

As night fell, Sergeant Darv Fallar moved his platoon into place around the island's eastern side. The rest of 6th Company was doing the same all around the island. Fallar understood the reasoning; with their tunnel fighting skills, the Acid Dogs knew how to work in low-light conditions, making them the opportune choice for night watch.

That, or General Manker just liked saddling them with crap details.

Below the bridge and just twenty feet above the water, Fallar's Acid Dogs crawled into place in the tumble of rocks that made up the side of the island. Fallar himself took up position behind a largish boulder that had rolled up alongside one of the bridge support struts. The stone was smooth from years of exposure to the tides, and Fallar's glove slid across it with little resistance. He took one last look at his men and hunkered down, Impaler ready. His audio pickups cranked to full, Fallar listened to the sound of the evening waves lapping along the shoreline. The sound was calm, and Fallar found himself nodding his head to the lazy rhythm, watching the amber light flicker across the sea.

Rocks broke behind him and Fallar turned, checking back over his shoulder. He saw Colonel Tyryr approaching down the slope from the Scholam proper, and threw her an easy salute.

"Ma'am."

"Darv," she replied, steadying herself to a stop on the stanchion. "Everything all right over here?"

"Pretty much," he replied. "Can't imagine them having the brass to try an infil during the night, especially over the water."

"But if they do—"

"If they do, we'll be ready to greet them." Fallar looked up at his superior officer. "Nothing's getting past us, Ana."

Tyryr smiled. "I could have you written up for that familiarity, Darv."

"Yeah, right," Fallar said, settling back into his crouch, back braced against the stanchion, feet against the boulder. "Have fun at your staff meeting."

"Don't be an ass," Tyryr replied, already climbing back up the slope. She reached the rockcrete courtyard a minute later, and walked past the gatehouse toward the main dome. The scholam was divided into six separate facilities, each of them shaped as domes gilded in stainless steel. Two were dorms for the cadets, another two were support structures housing supply and mess halls, and one was an amphitheatre. The largest of them, so dominating it was simply referred to as the main dome, housed the beating heart of the Scholam Progenium; the classrooms, lecture halls, training facilities, chapels, libraries, offices, disciplinarian centers, vox conductors, and the island's primary defenses.

The road to the main dome wound up through the crags of the island's face, switching back and forth on the path up from the entry courtyard. Tyryr walked it briskly, passing the tanks of the 75th Armored parked along its length, ignoring the looks of the tankers. They had a look in their eyes, and Tyryr knew that despite the concealing plates of her CMC armor, the men knew was a woman. This didn't especially bother her, but she did find it funny how easily their minds had been distracted.

A little further up the road, she passed 1st Company as it set up along the higher slopes. The Cadians were digging in, using their augmented strength to pull up slabs of rocky ground for makeshift cover. Tyryr saw Colonel Thade yelling at Trooper Hale, shaking a fist at him. She stopped on the road and waited, hands on hips, for the Cadian officer to finish.

Thade noticed her a moment later, then promptly broke from his argument and strode over to her. "Is it time?" he asked.

"Yeah," Tyryr said, and started to walk.

Thade took a moment to shout one last order at Hale, an order which earned him a single finger reward, before trotting to catch up with Tyryr. He fell into step beside her and they walked together up the remainder of the roadway.

"So," Thade said, "Your company's keeping the bay watched, huh?"

Tyryr nodded, but didn't speak. She still wasn't sure what to make of Kellan Thade. He was a competent infantry commander, maybe better than competent. If Tyryr were to be honest with herself, she would admit that Thade was the best damn infantry commander she'd ever seen. Sure, he followed regs to the letter, but what he was able to do within those regs was nothing short of astounding, and his men's adaptability in their CMC armor was incredible.

That said, he was still a staunch violet-eyed ass, and carried himself with the appropriate snobbery and holier-than-thou-art demeanor.

"They're good men," Thade said. He'd meant it as a compliment. It didn't come across as such.

"Gee, thanks for the approval," Tyryr said.

Thade blinked. "Hey, I was just trying to give you a compliment. Coming from my school of tactics, your methods are unconventional, but I'm beginning to appreciate them."

Ana Tyryr stopped walking and told her fellow colonel just where he could shove his compliment, and just how his school of tactics could accompany it, and exactly how he could appreciate all of the sensations such an action would bring. When she was done, Thade was left speechless and blinking a lot.

"Colonel Tyryr—" he began.

"Piss off, Thade," Tyryr shot back, before storming ahead of him into the main dome.

Thade waited a moment before following her.

* * *

"We're going to kill us a titan, and take the whole city back in eight hours," Jax said.

Around the briefing table, the assembled officers and adjutants stared at him. Thade's eyes widened, Hawke muttered a kind of 'huh', Arad crossed his arms with a frown, while Tyryr looked just plain confused. Colonel Brusak shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the motion made even more awkward by the bulk of his marauder armor. Setsui suddenly became very interested in the ceiling tiles, and it was doubtful he had even heard Jax in the first place.

On the opposite side of the table, the row of Marathon personnel had similar reactions. Colonel Rakatev laughed once, the noise restricted to his throat. Lang's jaw dropped, even more than it had when he saw them walk in the door. Tamdrake frowned and jerked his head back, as if slapped by the stupidity of the idea. Scholar Martel, the man in charge of the progenium, coughed into his fist, and his retinue of commissars and instructors glared at Dimitri.

In fact, everyone was glaring at Dimitri. No one dared glare at the Battle Saint, so they had picked the Battle Saint's equerry.

The war room's ventilation system kicked in with a groan and rattle of loose grates, and a blast of cool air washed across the head of the table. Dimitri's hair, matted down after wearing his helmet for so long, refused to budge against the breeze.

Finally, Dimitri leaned forward, hands on the table. "It will work."

"No," Tamdrake said, "it won't. The heaviest artillery we've got is my Baneblade, and even she isn't going to hurt that monster. Do you have any idea how many void shields that thing has? I don't either. That's because there are too damn many for our cogitators to isolate and calculate."

"The Battle Saint hurt it earlier," said Yevina Cardigan, speaking up for the first time since they had arrived at the scholam.

Tamdrake looked as if he thought the idea of her speaking up was quaint. "Yes, that's because it had dropped its shields to maneuver between those buildings. It had to sneak up on you. It gave you a free shot, and still you did little more than scratch its paint."

"I agree with Colonel Tamdrake," said Manker. "I don't see the rationale in this at all. We would be better off making actions around it and liberating the city over a period of days. Quietly, we could minimize enemy interference and—"

"You seen this?" Jax asked, pointing to the hololithic image at the center of the table. "We don't have days, Manker. The bastards are moving on the Assturds up in the mountains. We don't have time to dick around."

"We need a moral victory over the opponent," Dimitri elaborated. "If we bring the titan down, we stand a good chance of routing the heretics with minimal resistance. What's left will be easier to deal with."

"In an ideal world, yes," Tamdrake conceded, "but as I said, it is impossible to kill that titan with what firepower we have on hand. It is an Imperator, my friend, not some warhound."

"We can do it," Jax said, firmly.

Tamdrake looked straight at Jax, all pretence forgotten. "All right, just how do you plan on doing it?"

Jax took a deep breath and over the course of the next twenty minutes, outlined the entire plan. When he was done, silence fell in the war room.

Finally, Tamdrake spoke up again. "Well, now that's workable."

"It's insane," said Rakatev.

"Yes," Tamdrake agreed. "But workable."

Dimitri had been about to speak when the sound of gunfire reached their ears. Outside, an attack had begun on the Scholam Progenium, and the Dogs of War were returning fire.

* * *

They had come just as the final light of day faded. They emerged from the seaside in careful ranks, slipping up the bank silent as shadows. They moved across the rocks with ease, slipping between the boulders, melding with the pools of absolute black in the places where even the moonlight didn't reach. They were few, but they were strong, and skillful. This attack had been put off too long, and they had had plenty of time to prepare for it. The element of surprise was theirs.

One of the hunters moved out of the sea below the bridge, slipping through the rockslide. It made no sound, the steps of its giant, steel feet perfectly balanced as it slid around a stanchion, around the boulder leaning against it, and up the ridge.

It stopped, and turned, slowly, keeping its perilous, silent balance. Now this was interesting. It stared at the figure crouched between the stanchion and the boulder. The figure wore heavy armor of a kind it had never seen before, but it was unmistakably a man. It could smell the man's stench, the smell of held urine and sweat, of boredom and tiredness. The man was a weak creature. It would enjoy this.

It started forward, pulling a serrated blade from a concealed sheath, and reached out. It saw the joint between the man's collar and head, and the weak segmented plate covering the neck. It reached out, the tip of the knife caressing the air just above the man's throat.

A hand grabbed it across its breathe grille and pulled it down. Steel punctured its breastplate, and hot pain lanced through its chestplate as something plunged into its twin hearts. It struggled, training taking over, and threw itself back into its attacker.

This was wrong, it thought. The hunter was not to become the hunted.

Together, the creature and its attacker slammed into the rocks, stealth forgotten. The creature beat its limbs backwards, denting armor and breaking skin, but the blade in its hearts didn't budge. The creature broke free of the grip and stood, but to no effect—it was already dead.

Darv Fallar turned from his position between the boulder and the stanchion in time to see Rover Roverson pull his power sword from the chest of Fallar's would-be murderer.

"What the hell is that?" he asked.

"A Night Lord," Rover replied.

"A what?"

"A Chaos Space Marine, with the tendency to lord over nights." Rover flicked his power sword, the sizzling blood flying off in drops. "Call it in, Fallar. We're in deep shit."

* * *

Two squads of Night Lords assaulted the shores of the Scholam Progenium, a total of twenty fully armed Traitor Astartes. In their favor, they held the element of surprise, superior weaponry, and thousands of years of combat experience shared between them. On any other night, they would have slaughtered every Imperial in the bastion. On any other night, their bolters would have roared victoriously, their blades would have tasted the blood of the False Emperor's lackeys. On any other night, they would have strung up the few survivors between the bridge's suspension cables.

On any other night, they would have won.

But not tonight.

* * *

"Space Marines! Space Marines! _SPACE MARINES!_"

Fallar tried to scream it louder, but his voice was already drowned out under the thick, flat roar of bolters. Trooper Tagart went down next to Fallar, his vitals winking flat on Fallar's readout, and his brain case venting across Fallar's chest. Fallar went to return fire, but found that he had no targets. Not just from his eyes, but on every visual spectrum from intensified to thermal. He could trace the bolt trajectories, but they were sourced to empty places, as if the Night Lords were relocating after every burst. He simply had no target.

So he ran. He ran up the slope, ignoring the bolts that smacked into the rock at his feet and sent debris pinging off his shinguards. He couldn't see Roverson any more, and he found he didn't care. If Roverson wanted to go play hide-and-seek with the Scary Marines, Fallar wasn't about to stop him.

A bolt smashed into Fallar's shoulder, exploding the neo-steel guard and shorting out the mechanical ligaments beneath. Shrapnel, hot from electrical fire, gouged into the meat of his shoulder. Fallar kept going, making it another four steps before another bolt caught him in the waist. It was a grazing shot resulting in little more than superficial damage, but the impact still sent him for a tumble. Fallar landed just below the lip of the rocky shoretop and spun onto his back, looking back the way he had come.

His men running past him, Fallar's visor ticked off who was left on the beach. In his immediate cone of fire, he could see Tagart, Fural, Eker, Quoer, and Hurt. Each man's vitals were displayed alongside their name, and none of them had so much as a flutter of a heart signature. He still couldn't see a trace of a Night Lord beyond muzzle flashes in the dark, but he didn't care.

Darv Fallar snapped his Impaler into place at his shoulder and opened fire. The ripping, hypersonic report tore across the soundscape, undercutting the heavy thud of bolters with its deadly report. A starburst of flame shot out of Fallar's muzzle, the handle kicked in his grip, and spikes tore downrange, slamming into rocks and water and steel and darkness. Fallar worked the barrel back and forth, holding the trigger down, and listened to the impacts filter back to him. They were all hollow, the sound of spikes hitting terrain, not targets. He heard rocks splinter and water splash, but nothing more than—

He heard a rapid plink-plink-plink of steel being penetrated, of spikes punching through armor, and the growl of something dying. A shadow fell in the night, and Fallar smiled.

"Got one," he grinned and stood, before running the rest of the way up the slope and across the courtyard.

He ran all the way back to the line where 1st Company had set up their makeshift rock blockade, ignoring the bolts flying about him, and leapt the barricade. He landed on his ass and scrambled back, his fusion pack bumping into the rocks. Fallar dropped his clip and reached for another one at his belt, realizing with a start that there wasn't any there. In fact, there wasn't even a belt.

"Shit," he muttered. That bolt to his waist must have broken off the belt, and now all his ammo was laying back on the beach.

"Hey, you got a magazine?" Fallar asked the man next to him.

"Yeah," the man said, handing him one. Fallar looked at him. It was Roverson.

"How the hell did you get back up here before me?" he asked.

Roverson shrugged. "Ran."

Fallar started to tell him to stop being such a smart ass when the enemy fire kicked up a notch. This time, it was accompanied by something much louder: explosions.

* * *

The guardhouses flanking the bridge entrance were heavy, steel reinforced rockcrete bunkers, each of them rated to stand up to an Earthshaker artillery round. Somehow, the Night Lords circumvented this resistance, and the guardhouses exploded like tin outhouses. The men inside, a mix of Marathon regulars and commissar cadets, died instantly, crushed under the weight of the debris and flame.

Colonel Thade saw this, wondered why the attackers would even bother with the guardhouses, and immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion.

Thade activated his commlink. "One-Lead to First, One-Lead to First, come in."

"This is First," replied Manker. "Go ahead, One-Lead."

"Sir, the Night Lords just took out—"

"The Night Lords?" Manker asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes, sir. Roverson's confirmed it. They took out the guardhouses, sir. That can only mean—"

"They want an open route for reinforcements," Manker replied. "Very well. All section leaders, this is First. We have Night Lords Chaos Astartes on the island. Assume all lines are broken and go to first level alert, hunter-killer SOP. Maintain your unit cohesion on assigned points. First out."

Thade disconnected the link and looked out across the courtyard. The bolters had stopped firing, and everything was suddenly quiet. The courtyard was still, the tanks of the 75th Armored sitting inert on the rockcrete, their hulls reflecting dully under the lumenglobe posts set throughout the area.

A flurry of shots rang out, so rapid they seemed like a single burst, and the globes all across the courtyard shattered. Night engulfed the courtyard, the road leading to the domes, and the island as a whole.

The screams started less than a second later.

* * *

Two of the largest billets in the dorm domes had been requisitioned for the Dogs of War, and promptly divided amongst the companies by the line troopers. The two companies that had chosen to bed down closest one another had been the 3rd and 5th, the Harakoni Reapers and the Mordian Marauders. Both companies were specialist sections, and during the past months of training and outfitting, it had been expected that they would develop a quaint rivalry, but so far, nothing of the sort had occurred.

The Mordian view of the Harakoni had been epitomized by their commander, Karl Brusak, who had been known to call them a 'disorganized mob of superstitious morons addicted to adrenaline, afflicted with a basic failure to grasp the higher functions of Imperial society.' Upon hearing this, the Reapers' own Colonel Wans Setsui had asked 'what's wrong with adrenaline?'

Clearly, there had been no love lost between the companies.

What happened in the next ten minutes would bring them closer than any amount of training ever could.

Setsui and Brusak had walked together from the briefing to the billets, keeping stride with one another out of pure coincidence. When they entered the dorm dome and heard the chaos coming from the billets, Setsui broke into a run, bounding forward on his lighter armor chassis. He rounded corners at a slant, and as he drew nearer, he began to discern the meaning of the sounds he was hearing. Someone was firing a bolter.

Setsui readied his Impaler and burst into the billet hall, head-first into a Night Lord.

The Chaos Space Marine pulled its chainsword from the gut of a Reaper. The reversing blade dragged out a string of steaming intestines, and blood squirted across the Night Lord's midnight-blue armor. The Night Lord dropped the corpse with a thud and swung at Setsui. The Harakoni colonel yanked his head back, avoiding the churning teeth by an inch, and opened fire as he backed out of the billet on his jumpjets. His first hundred rounds went wide, the next fifty caught the Night Lord in its leg, and the remaining three hundred blasted out its torso. Blood splashed the billet floor, but the Night Lord kept coming, sheer rage carrying it forward. The chainsword dropped, and the Traitor Astartes brought up its bolter with its last dregs of strength.

Colonel Brusak stopped it from firing, his gigantic fist powering the dying Night Lord back through the doorframe and onto the floor. The bolter clattered to the ground.

Brusak leaned into the billet hall and couldn't see a thing. Beyond the first few bunks, everything was dark, lit intermittently by the muzzle flashes of bolters and Impalers. Men were screaming as they died, and the whole room smelled of spent ammo.

Bursak turned to his comrade. "Colonel, I need your help."

Setsui was reloading his Impaler. "Yeah?"

"Yes. My men are taking their evening meal in the mess dome. They are not in their armor."

"Oh," Setsui said.

"Their suits are in there." Brusak pointed into the darkened hall. "You are faster than I am. If you can go get them and lead them in from the other end, I will stay here and get your company to repel the attack."

"And then your boys can finish them with the heavier firepower," Setsui finished.

"Precisely," Brusak said, but the Harakoni colonel was already running back through the dome corridors, his jumpjets flashing through the dark.

Taking a breath, Brusak switched on his low-light intensifier and headed into the billet hall.

* * *

The command squad was moving across the concourse from the main dome when Setsui blew past them on a column of flame. The Harakoni colonel left a trail of smoke in his wake, and several of the unarmored Marathon personnel started coughing.

Dimitri clicked his commlink live. "Colonel Setsui, where are you going?"

"Sorry Mr. Vlasna, no time to talk. Heading to the mess hall. Have a good evening."

"Uh, you too?"

The link went dead. Dimitri shook his head and jogged back to the front of the group, taking up his place next to Jax. "He's heading for the mess hall. Any idea why, Manker?"

"Maybe he's hungry?" Jax offered. Manker ignored him.

"The men of 5th Company are in there." Manker paused to listen to his comm. "Colonel Brusak is currently leading the 3rd Company in their billets. A squad of Night Lords has penetrated the eastern domes."

"Shit," Dimitri muttered.

"Report from Hawke. Another section has assaulted the seaward docks." Manker listened a moment more. "He's holding them at the southern supply dome."

"Double shit. Where haven't they penetrated?"

"The undercroft," said Scholar Martel. The old man was struggling to keep up with the armored Dogs, and was being helped along by one of Manker's Blackened Guard. Just saying that much had taxed him heavily, and he descended into a coughing fit, unable to speak.

Thankfully, Dimitri knew exactly what he was talking about.

"The what?" Jax asked.

"The undercroft," Dimitri started. "If the Night Lords came in from the ocean, then they'll have access to the undercroft. It's a series of burial tunnels under the island. They're based off of a natural cave system. Several places have caved in or been opened to the sea. That's how they made it into the eastern dorms."

Manker grunted an annoyed grunt. "Then we must contain them. Colonel Tyryr, assemble your company."

"Yes, sir," Tyryr replied before heading off down a peripheral walkway.

Manker looked at the grouping of Marathon soldiers, specifically the men from the Scholam itself. "Who among you knows this undercroft?"

One of the cadets raised his hand, and the more senior instructors and full commissars moved away from him. "I do, sir."

Dimitri looked at him. The kid was just that: a kid. He was muscled in the lean, uneven way of mid-teenaged years, and his hair was a soft brown cut short to regs. His clothes were the red and black fatigues of a commissariat cadet, with markings indicating he was quite far along the path to becoming a full-on junior commissar.

"What's your name, cadet?" Dimitri asked.

"Cald Roep, sir, senior Commissar Cadet." The kid saluted, and gestured to the younger, chubbier child next to him. "This is Sal."

Sal nodded eagerly, his thick neck engulfing his chin. Manker ignored him.

"Cadet Roep, you will assist Colonel Tyryr in her purging of the undercroft. Follow her now, and regard any order she gives you as coming straight from the Throne itself."

"Yes, General."

Roep saluted again before running off, his lasgun at the ready.

Dimitri looked at Jax. "Well, where do you want to be?"

* * *

Setsui's voice registered at the peripheries of his concentration, as one of the most unimportant parts of his current existence. "Colonel Brusak, I'm moving your men in through the northern entrance. Can you guarantee the hostiles are distracted enough for this to work?"

Karl Brusak slammed the Night Lord against the barracks wall, pinning him under the inhuman strength of his Marauder armor, and brought up his free hand. The range was too close for heavy ordinance like his concussion grenades, and his lighter, anti-infantry wrist armaments were nearly dry, so Brusak punched the Night Lord in the face. His neo-steel gauntlet cracked the ceramite helm, and blood began to leak from the wound in the fascia.

"Colonel Brusak?" Setsui asked.

"Yes, the northern approach is clear!" Brusak shouted. "Bring them in!"

Replying had distracted him for no more than a second, but that's all the time the Night Lord needed. Something exploded under Brusak's left foot, probably a frag grenade, and he lost his balance. The Night Lord, freed from the press hold, kicked out with both legs against Brusak's chestplate. The Marauder colonel fell, landing on the billet floor with a reverberating thud.

The Night Lord drew a chainsword and moved forward, but was caught by two of the Harakoni Reapers. One of them held a chainblade of his own, and he locked into a brutal duel with the Chaos Astartes, while the other backed off with an Impaler, trying to get a clear shot.

"We've got him, Colonel!" chirped the one with the rifle. "Take your time, yes?"

The duel lasted all of ten seconds before the first Reaper fell, blood gushing from the slice across his helmet where the top half of his head had been. The Night Lord lunged at the second Reaper and they tumbled through the billet wall together, kicking and stabbing, into the next hall.

The Night Lord ended up on top, holding the Impaler at bay as he ground the chainsword's teeth into the Harakoni soldier's chest. Sparks flew from busted meme-coils, and the Reaper died in spasms. The Chaos Marine had just begun to stand when the concussion grenade caught him in the face, ending his life and existence as a single body. Blood, black and scorched as the busted armor, splashed across the hallway.

Brusak lowered his arm. The bravery of the Harakoni Dogs had surprised him so far, but what he had just witnessed absolutely floored him. The fact that they had sacrificed themselves to save him made the amnesty between their two companies seem useless and petty by comparison. Brusak vowed to himself then to never let something that low hinder his judgment again.

But as he turned to the trio of Night Lords running at him down the billet hall, firing with their bolters, Brusak wondered if he would ever get the chance to exercise that vow.

"Incoming!" someone shouted, "Get down!"

Brusak obeyed as best he could, his heavy armor responding to the 'duck' command with all the deftness of a dying grox. Concussive shells whipped over his head and into the Astartes, blowing them, the bunks around them, the roof, and the rest of that portion of the billet hall into several smaller, pummeled crumbs of nothing.

Brusak's ears were still ringing when he heard the next order. "By the Battle Saint, into them! Kill them all! For Harakon! For Mordia! For Terra and the Emperor!"

As one, the rest of the 5th Company Marauders charged down through the dorms, weapons blaring. Explosions rocked the building from combat zones in hallways completely unseen by Brusak, and suddenly the pinned Harakoni were on their feet, howling and firing in a roving frenzy throughout the compound.

Brusak was just getting to his feet when Setsui found him. The Reaper colonel popped his facemask and grinned as he helped steady Brusak.

"You've got good men here, for sure," he said, gesturing to the two Marauders just behind him. Brusak recognized them as Burr and Tarnak, his second and third officers. "Really helped me figure out what the hell I was doing."

"Likewise," Brusak said. He looked to Burr and Tarnak. "Well, get to it, then."

As the two officers moved away, Brusak looked at Setsui. "Colonel, I want to apologize for any—"

"Ahp-bap-bap!" Setsui stopped him with a wave of his hand and shake of his head. "No need, Colonel. We've been through some fighting together now, and I think that'll do more than any words. I respect you and you respect me. In the end, we might even become friends."

Brusak smiled. "Very well."

"Yes, I thought so." Setsui turned back and forth, looking for something, his colossal jet pack wobbling with each turn. "Now then, have you seen an intact head anywhere?"

* * *

"Move it, kid!"

Ana Tyryr reinforced her words with a shove that sent Cald Roep flying through the archway and into the main tunnel. He landed hard, his lasgun skittering aside in the slop of the tunnel floor. Roep scrambled after it, feeling around in the muck. Water, salty and muddy, made its way into his mouth.

He was followed a second later by Tyryr herself, who landed in the soaked mudrun next to him. The Acid Dog colonel fired back the way she had come, her Impaler deafening in the close confines of the undercroft. Something unseen and corrupt growled in pain, and Tyryr pumped a trio of rocket grenades down the arterial tunnel. The explosions cracked the already weakened archway, and the whole mess came down atop the Night Lords within, killing them outright.

Genehanced god warriors or not, even they couldn't withstand the weight of an island dropping on their heads.

Tyryr looked at Cald. "You all right?"

Her helmet had come off in the tight scuffle in the arterial, and her dirty, mud streaked face was inches from Roep's. He felt something move in his trousers and knew it wasn't a grave worm.

"Yes," he said. It came out as a squeak of his adolescent voice, and he wanted to flay himself for it. Of all the times for his voice to crack…

Tyryr hauled him to his feet and pushed him along the tunnel, barking orders to the rest of her company. At this rate, they would have the whole of the undercroft sealed in minutes. No problems, no snags, no nothing. Apparently, no one had bothered to teach these super-duper jackasses how to fight in a tunnel, and the Acid Dogs were making them pay for it with every blast of spike fire and every caved-in pathway.

Roep found Sal halfway along on his way back to the rearguard. The younger kid crawled out from behind an overturned casket, lasgun held tight in his grip, and looked at his older friend.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Nothing."

Sal grinned. When he grew into adulthood, it would be described as shit-eatingly bastard-like, and would earn its owner more than his fair share of pub fights and death threats. Right now, it just showed off the gaps in his smile where late-onset tooth loss was wrecking havoc on Roep's chubby friend.

"You're scared!" Sal cooed. "You're super scared, Cald!"

Roep tried to look pissed. "Shut up, Sal."

"Or what?"

"Or," Roep thought about that, "I'll shoot you and stuff your tubby butt in that coffin you were hiding behind."

Sal's grin lost its shit-eatingness fast. "Don't be a jerk, Cald."

"Whatever," Roep replied, "let's just get out of here before the whole thing comes down on our heads. These Dog people are in love with explosives."

* * *

The Cadians were fully engaged in the courtyard when the command squad arrived in force with the Blackened Guard. Jax paused at the top of the hill, looking down on the pitched battle, before issuing commands.

"Okay," he said, turning to face his retinue, "we're gonna do this fast and tight. All you Marathon people stay on the hill. This is an armor fight, plain and simple, and you didn't live through a week of hell to die in the middle of it."

No one seemed to have a problem with that. Jax went on.

"Dimitri, you stick with me. Manker, break your guard into fireteams and secure the edges. Try to keep the fight in where the tanks are parked, so we can keep 'em from getting away."

"Yes, Battle Saint," Manker replied, before beginning his own briefing with his private company.

Jax looked down at his bodyguards. "Menshaw, Sternev, where's Tarrius?"

"**I am here," **said Tarrius, drawing everyone's attention to where he was standing behind them, his mechanical body quietly humming. How he had snuck up on them, none would ever know.

"Good," Jax said. "You're with Menshaw and Stenev. Try to be a decoy to draw out targets for them."

"**Understood."**

"Gak yes!" Sternev chirped, holding up a fist to the dreadnought, "We're gonna kick some Chaos ass!"

"**Yes, we are," **Tarrius agreed. One of his four-fingers touched Sternev's fist before retracting and expanding with the other three in mimicry of an explosion.

Jax looked back at Yevina Cardigan and Animal Mother. "You two, stay here with the Marathon people. I don't have to tell you why."

Cardigan nodded in understanding, while Animal just saluted.

Jax looked down at Dimitri. "And you stay right beside me."

"Always," Dimitri replied, checking his Impaler one last time. "You want to cap off this speech?" he asked over a private link.

"Getting there." Jax drew his sword with the sharp clang of fine steel being pulled from a scabbard, and thrust it into the night air. Energy flowed into the blade, forming a beacon of holy light that speared through the darkness. "Dogs of War, kill them all!"

**Author's Note: Okay, internet, we've got serious business to talk about today, and considering how gigantic that chapter was, I think I'll give you a hefty note.**

**I feel like I have to address the issue of Rover Roverson here, but I can't, and I'll tell you why. Firstly, I don't like to answer questions in PMs often. Typically, if it's an actual problem, I try to address it in the story, and I wil do the same thing with Rover, but not all at once. Who and what Rover is are questions that I have planned to answer throughout the next three to four arcs, and I don't want to just answer them in a single scene of trite exposition. I'm sure you all have ideas as to what he is, and a few of you with specific interests may have figured out what he is, but even you don't know the full story. Clearly, something is awry with Rover Roverson, and I will deal with it.**

**On another note, I'm in love with the Night Lords. Originally, I had an idea to do an entire arc fighting them (which will still happen eventually), but they just sorta popped up in this chapter. This was supposed to be a boring briefing chapter, but then in literally one sentence it evolved into a pitched battle against the Night Haunter's own. That's what's really killer about writing: it's so organic that plots change and evolve on their own and drop heavily armored cannibal god-beings on your main characters. They've sorta lost here, but that just means they'll be back with even more anger in arcs to come.**

**Also, I'm going to finish _Green is Best_ by the end of March. I just need a week of clean slate, spring break, to finish it, which will be very convenient considering the timeline of this story and exactly who is going to be returning to the cast in the weeks and months to come.**

**I think that's about it, folks. Next time we mop up the remnants on Commissar Island and move back into the city. Also, Dogs vs Titan, Jax vs a pretty fun guy, vortex grenades, and the return of more old friends.**

**Stay tuned.**


	50. Chapter 50: Marathon: Ready, Set, Titan

What was left of the Night Lords strike force was left dead or slipping away into the sea by 2300. The smoke over the island was finally clearing by 2330, revealing just what damage the attacks had done to the buildings of the scholam progenium.

The southern approach, where the enemy had assaulted the Imperial rearguard, was in flames thanks to the brutal scorched earth tactics employed by Bloody Hawke's 2nd Company, who had seen fit to allow the fight to crawl out from the loading docks and into the supply domes proper. The domes themselves had been all but flattened by Astartes heavy weapons fire, and what did remain amounted to little more than battered support pillars. Very few casualties were suffered here, on either side; most of the Night Lords had made their escape during the destruction when they realized the tactical suicide of assaulting the Dogs' position.

The main dorm dome still stood, but for no apparent reason. The structure had been gutted during the fighting as the 3rd Company Reapers and 5th Company Marauders repelled a strike to the dome's heart. The Marauders' heavy weaponry had done a number on the billet halls, and few walls still stood in the dome, and those that did were riddled with boltholes and cooling spikes. Smoke breathed from the broken windows and sagging doorframes of the dome as the Harakoni Reapers moved around the perimeter, singing and impaling severed enemy heads on their bayonets in celebration, the Mordians watching with some amusement.

Beneath the island, the labyrinth of undercroft tunnels that had stood for centuries had been reduced to wet cracks in the otherwise solid stone. Most of the tunnels had been collapsed by the Acid Dogs of 6th Company, who with their intrepid Colonel Tyryr had spent the attack hunting and crushing the Night Lords attempting to strike deep into the island using the undercroft as a throughway. Inside of ten minutes, 6th Company's actions had passed word-of-mouth into Legion-wide legend. The Mordant tunnel instincts had proved invaluable, and not one Acid Dog fell defending the tunnels.

The main action of the night had been between the Cadians of 1st Company and the Night Lords who had assaulted the island's main courtyard. There, under the main dome, the Cadians, along with the seventy-five soldiers of the Blackened Guard and Battle Saint himself, had repulsed the attack. Pinning the Night Lords into the parked ranks of the 75th Armored's tanks with multiple flank attacks and forward guard maneuvers, the Cadians managed to isolate and destroy the Chaos Marines one at a time.

The Battle Saint made the final kill atop the Marathon Baneblade _Unstoppable Advance_, and watched from that vantage as his Legion reorganized on the courtyard below. Someone got the pole lights working again, and in the harsh illumination Jax could see the blood and dirt and soot flecking his Dogs' armor. The fight had been fast, brutal, and, in some places, quite costly.

Jax hauled the Night Lord sergeant at his feet into a sitting position. The corrupt Astartes made a gurgling, choking noise, the cluster of spikes in its gut preventing it from doing anything more. It was near death, and would slip away within minutes. Jax cut its head off and kicked its body off the Baneblade, letting it hit the courtyard with a heavy thud.

The Dogs, and their newfound Marathon allies, burst into raucous cheering. Jax let out a howl of victory, known in another time and world as a Rebel Yell, and held out his sword. The cheering increased, the roar of applause reaching a fever pitch. The Dogs were screaming their elation, and the courtyard rocked with their howls. Men from completely different companies embraced one another, the boundaries that had defined them an hour before completely forgotten. This had been their first true taste of war as a legion, and they had come through alive. The adrenaline in their blood and the power at their disposal formed a kind of high that infected the crowd, combining and multiplying as it swept the group. To a man, the Dogs felt like they could take on anything, and each one was yearning for something else to shoot.

Truly, the Blood Pact could not have picked a worse time to launch their follow-up attack on the bridge.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 50: The Fall of Marathon: Part 5: Ready, Set, Titan_

An iron grotesque, knocked from the face of a Blood Pacter during the slaughter the night before, crunched under the Baneblade's tread as it crawled across the bridge. Colonel Sergio Tamdrake was as aware of the grotesque's significance as he was of its existence, which was to say he wasn't at all, and as the tanks of his 75th Armored led the way from the island stronghold, he found himself enjoying the morning air. Ever since the invasion had begun, the skyline above the ocean had been dark every morning, choked with the unholy coagulants the Archenemy had spewed into the atmosphere. It had hurt Tamdrake's eyes to see that kind of horizon, and while the effects of the smog were still visible, this particular morning had brought with it a kind of silver lining of sunlight peaking through the oppressive cover, and the colonel could feel it on his face.

"Here you are, sir," said Trooper Methal as he appeared from the hold below into the secondary cupola hatch. "Just like you like it."

Tamdrake took the offered cup and sipped it. Caffeine, fresh and brewed on the fusion grate of the super tank's engine compartment, washed down his throat. It was scaldingly hot, and Tamdrake grimaced as it slid into his stomach. In turn, his stomach rumbled, and Tamdrake was painfully aware of how empty it was.

"Thanks, Methal," he said.

Methal looked at him suspiciously. A compliment from the tank commander was as out of the ordinary as a round piercing _Unstoppable_'s hull.

Tamdrake looked at him. "You look like you have a question, trooper."

"No, sir."

"Well, don't you have some loading to do?"

Methal nodded and disappeared into the bowels of the tank. Tamdrake sipped his coffee and looked down the hull at his driver. "Whiskel, how's she holding up this morning?"

Whiskel looked round at his commander, the gigantic goggles and antennae on his vox-helmet making him look all the world like a horsefly taken human form.

"She's talkin' to me, Colonel, sir," Whiskel said, patting the hull next to his opened hatch.

"And what's the word?" Tamdrake asked.

Whiskel grinned. "She wants a little payback, sir."

"I'm with her, Whiskel." Tamdrake leaned back in his cupola and looked ahead at the smoky spires of the Central Acropolis that loomed at the end of the bridge. He took another sip for his stomach's benefit and sighed.

"I'm with her," he muttered.

* * *

The plan was detailed beyond belief, and while he appreciated details, Colonel Kellan Thade wasn't sure the idea was sound. He would follow it, of course, but the execution seemed a little too haphazard for his tastes, relying too much on tenuous threads coming together at the right points. It all seemed too thin to actually work.

But then what the hell did he know about taking down a titan using six companies of power armored infantry, an under strength Guard regiment, some tanks and a bunch of green-arsed scholam students? Nothing, supposed Kellan Thade.

His company was the first into the city at dawn, moving farther and faster than any other asset in the task force thanks to their unique transport: the vultures hoverbikes of 4th Company. Teamed two to a vulture, the Cadian Dogs were ferried into the city on growling hover accelerators.

Thade checked to keep his boots locked into the running board and hooked his hands tighter into the grips on the side of the bike's fuselage. Below him, the rockcrete whipped by in a blur, and the city around him seemed to be made of quick, extremely detailed blinks of vision, blinks of dead bodies in shattered storefronts and street posts leaning at broken angles like the dead legs of a pond stork's corpse.

"Calm down," said Raider-Colonel Arad, looking down from his saddle. "You're denting the grips."

Across the bike from Thade, Trooper Hale snorted. Frowning, Thade relaxed his grasp on the grips.

"Sorry," he said.

"No problem," Arad said, before clicking his commlink live. "Look alive, lads. We're coming up on the target."

The vultures circled in around the Collegia Astropathicus, exiting the skyway and into the network of vaulted parking structures around the building proper. The Collegia had stood for centuries, a colossal structure of stone keeps and bronzed steel towers quite at odds with the clean modern Acropolis.

Arad gestured and his prong of ten bikes followed him up to the main entrance, coming to a stop at the foot of a flight of steps.

"Company, dismount," Thade ordered, stepping down from the vulture, Impaler in hand. "Staggered entry, sweep and secure. One-Lead out."

Thade looked to Arad. "I think that's about it, Raider-Colonel."

Arad nodded before gunning his throttle and turning back toward the skyway. "Good luck, Colonel Thade."

* * *

"Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the help and I respect them and all that, but I'm not too sure I like this group here."

Sal paused long enough to take another bite from his ration bar and shift his lasgun's strap. "You know what I mean, Cald?"

Cald Roep shook his head. "Not a bit, Sal. And you've got something on your chin."

"Really? Where?"

"There," said Colonel Tyryr. The Mordant officer aimed her Impaler and shot both of them with imaginary rounds. "And now you're both dead. Shut up and keep your head on a swivel or you'll end up dead. I didn't request you little arsewipes to be part of my company so you could bicker and whine."

"Yes ma'am, Colonel," Roep said, snapping off a salute.

Sal tried to imitate him, but his brain malfunctioned and, "Yeah, me too," was all he could manage.

Tyryr shook her head with a grin and marched past them, heading up to the front. 6th Company was stretched down one of the central avenues beneath the skyways, making their way on foot through the tumble-down ruins of the undercity. In this kind of environment, the rubble and collapsed buildings were too close-in for Arad's vultures, and the duties of outrunners and scouts fell to foot soldiers. With their background in tunneling, the Acid Dogs of 6th Company were the ideal candidates.

Tyryr moved through a crushed mound of gravel that had been a hab block and came upon the platoon heading the very front of the column.

"What's up, Darv?" she asked, coming to a halt alongside her friend.

Sergeant Fallar shook his head. "Same shit as always, ma'am."

"Care to expand a bit?"

Fallar shrugged and pointed out at the area immediately in front of their advance—a ruined series of hab blocks. "This whole area used to be part of the city's low rent housing district, but it's pretty much been leveled in the fighting up until now. As things got serious and the civilians started to mount a resistance, they did so here. Pitch small arms battles went on all through these blocks."

"So what's the breakdown?" Tyryr asked.

"Well, the good is easy. The habs extend out under ninety percent of the city, so if we get the lay of the land and clear a few routes, we can move quickly and quietly throughout the entire Acropolis."

"And what's the bad?"

"The tactic isn't exactly innovative," Fallar sighed. "In fact, it's instinctual enough for an animal to figure it out."

"Meaning those beastmen we saw yesterday are probably nesting here." Tyryr sighed herself. "Tell everyone to keep their eyes open, but don't split up. We aren't here to hunt them down. Just stay en route to the objective."

"Yes, ma'am."

Tyryr smacked him on the back. "Keep it up, Darv. You know where we're headed."

* * *

"Where the hell are we headed?"

Colonel Rakatev heard the voice and held up a finger to silence his fellow colonel. "Say again, Chernov? I've got some interference on this end, over."

"We're at the depot, sir." Chernov's voice filtered in through the vox-horn, tinged with static. "Looks like it took some secondary damage, but most of the Chimeras are still functional. Drivers are taking to them now."

"You have an ETA?"

Chernov coughed on the other end, and Rakatev grimaced. More and more troopers were succumbing to the little coughs and wheezes that had slowly built up over the past week. Rakatev was magos, and much less a priest, but he was certain the sickness had something to do with the taint in the air. He just prayed it was nothing permanent. Or fatal.

"The first few are rolling out now," Chernov said. "Give us ten minutes?"

"You've got it. Over and out." Rakatev slammed the vox horn onto its hook, ignoring Lang's grunt. Then he turned to face the man behind him. "What did you want?"

Colonel Setsui unhooked his nozzle plate and slid back his helmet to run a hand through his hair. He started to speak, then stopped and scrunched his nose in disgust.

"What's this smell, my friend? Has someone let out a sewer main?"

"Chaos invasion. It does that." Rakatev frowned. "What did you want?"

"Oh, I wanted to know where we're headed."

"The stadium district," Rakatev replied. "Did you not pay attention to anything at the briefing?"

Colonel Setsui grinned his stupid grin. "No, no, I did not."

Rakatev sighed. He hadn't met many of the Dog officers face-to-face yet, but the current examples weren't very reassuring. Colonel Setsui was a highly irregular man, even when one looked past the Harakoni characters painted all across his power armor.

"Once my men get their transportation back, we'll be mobilizing and making headway up the eastern avenues flanking the Grand Stadium," Rakatev explained.

"Oh yes, now I remember," Setsui wagged a finger. "We are the bait, yes?"

"To a pessimist, maybe."

"We are bait," Setsui said with finality, walking past Rakatev to the middle of the intersection. "And I do not piss my mists, thank you very much."

When Setsui was out of earshot, Lang looked back at his CO. "Is he retarded?"

"That's improper talk of a superior officer," Rakatev responded. Lang gave him a sour look, and he added, "Also, it might be true."

* * *

The marauders of 5th Company lumbered into the Cult District a little after midmorning, going largely unnoticed. This was not a testament to any kind of stealth on the side of the Mordians, but rather to the remarkable lack of life in the Acropolis. There was simply no one left alive to spot them.

Accompanying the marauders was a large contingent of commissariat troopers. From instructor-level political officers to cadets formed into fireteams, these supplemental soldiers numbered almost two thousand strong by themselves, almost doubling the Mordians. They were a beaten, inexperienced lot of men, but their spirit knew no bounds, and Colonel Brusak was proud to have them marching alongside his Dogs.

"Good to have you with us, Scholar," he said as he marched up the stairs to the cathedral.

Scholar Martel nodded. He had a grim set to his face, and somehow, Brusak doubted it was just due to his commissariat demeanor. Martel had been in a lot of pain the night before, his aged body struggling to cope with the stresses of combat. The Battle Saint himself had ordered Martel outfitted with a suit of CMC armor. The old man's body was still hurting him, hence the grimace, but that hadn't stopped him from getting out in the thick of it. Brusak respected him immensely.

"Thank you, son," Martel replied. He took a moment to shout the commissar cadets behind him into a decent step advance. It was the shout of a man accustomed to pitching his voice above gunfire and bellow artillery—a commissar's shout. "It's an honor to march with you," Martel said when he was done.

"Were you always a scholar, then?" Brusak asked.

"No, I was a field officer once. Commissar, I mean. Retired to scholar duties when I took a bit of shrap in the spine twenty years back. Why do you ask?"

Brusak had been about to explain to Martel about his recognition of the commissar shout when he opened the doors to the cathedral proper and got a nose full of the most disgusting stench of his life. A cocktail of decayed flesh, boiled blood, spent gunpowder, lanced boil, ozone, and another dozen things Brusak couldn't put a name to assaulted his senses, and the Mordian found himself gagging. Against his better judgment, he looked into the cathedral. Through the gloom, he managed to make out the edges of shattered pews and bloodstained floors, but no bodies. Long streamers hung from the ceiling down into the aisle. Only after a moment did Brusak realize the streamers _were_ the bodies, shredded and draped from the buttresses like pennants. One of the cadets lost the breakfast he hadn't eaten; another screamed and ran back down the stairs.

Brusak slammed the doors shut and looked back at Martel. The scholar was staring at the door. Neither of them spoke for a long moment.

"If it's all the same to you," Martel finally said, "I think we ought to hold the area around the cathedral, as opposed to the interior."

"Agreed," Brusak said.

* * *

Jax, Dimitri, and the rest of the command squad moved through the undercity behind the Mordant advance force. The Blackened Guard was with them, along with Manker, who seemed to be preoccupied with walking purposefully away from them.

"He's pissed, isn't he?" Jax said.

"Can you blame him?" Dimitri tucked his Impaler under his arm and worked the cap off his canteen. "You usurped command from him."

"I didn't surp shit. I'm the Battle Saint, and this is my plan."

"Right."

Jax made a hurumph noise and took a drink from Dimitri's canteen. "Speaking of my plan, where are we?"

"We're half a kilometer out from the stadium's base," Dimitri replied.

"And where's everybody else?"

Dimitri slid his visor down and flicked on the HUD positioner. "Well, let's find out…"

* * *

The Chimeras hadn't been damaged in their week and a half of inaction, and as they moved out from the motor pool, Rakatev found himself thanking the Throne that the APC were able to hold the Reapers. They were in the lead vehicle, with Lang driving and Rakatev standing behind him, peering through the windshield. Setsui was in the troop compartment with his own command squad, all of them hunched to keep their jump packs from getting caught on the webbing and support struts.

"Are we on track?" Rakatev asked.

"Yes, sir," Lang replied. The controls bucked in his grip, but he held them steady, thanks largely to the strength of his artificial arm. "East arterial, Tangle-bound."

"Good." Rakatev stood as well as he could in the confines of the vehicle, his back popping. "Make sure we get there before the rest of the Legion. I'd hate to be the one to screw this up."

* * *

"Prong leaders, sound off." Arad's voice filtered in through the background noise of roaring hover-turbines and whipping wind. "Any sightings? Over."

Avi listened to the other prong leaders sound off negative sightings, all the while knowing exactly why. Holding a hand in the air, the Major Sergeant brought his own prong to a halt on the skyway, looking out at the monster before them.

It moved among the buildings like a structure all its own, its lumbering gait that of a fearsome god-predator, its steel flesh crawling with a kind of rusty infection. It was tainted, Avi realized. He could tell even from here.

He clicked his comm. live. "Avi here. I have visual. Repeat: I see the Titan."

**Author's Note: The best thing about this story is how many characters it has. I love the variety, I love how they grow and change, I love their interactions, I love their squabbles, I love their one-sided love for equerries (Yevina, cough), and I love thier humor. Simultaneously, I hate how many characters this story has, because-in this arc especially-they all have to be in every chapter and it's driving me up a fricking wall. They were going to fight the Titan this chapter, but I had to get this all out of the way so that they could do it without questions as to why the Cadians didn't jump in, or why the Mordians weren't there, or what have you. After this arc, I'm going to very physically split the characters up into different theaters of war so that I can tell a Cadian story one day, a Mordian the next, a Mordant the day after that, and top it all off with some Harakoni nuttiness the next week, instead of having to split a single chapter up into a bunch of little bits.**

**Also, I was very busy these last two weeks. School stuff. You know how it is.**

**Anyway, I don't blame you if you didn't think this chapter was super-duper, but please be content in the knowledge that I'm still alive, and that they'll fight the Titan next week. We're back on schedule, ladies and gentlemen.**

**Tostarmahn**


	51. Chapter 51: Marathon: Titanfall

The _Claw of the Omnisiah_ cooled in the evening light, the heated layers of steel popping as the fires fizzled out under the breeze of the coming night. The hole in its chest steamed, and the district around its fallen body shook with the residual structural collapses its thundering fall had triggered. Teams of Dogs moved across the body, purging its face with heavy flamers and filling the interior with gouts of promethium. The area was heavily irradiated, and with the lack of wind on Marathon, likely would be for a few months. Despite this, the Chaos forces in the city mounted two attacks to reclaim the Titan's corpse, attacks that had so far failed spectacularly.

Rakatev was just finishing up a new defense wall made of enemy bodies when the third attack came, signaling its approach with a volley of mortar fire. A squad down the line from Rakatev detonated, killing every trooper and blasting the treads off a nearby Chimera. Rakatev himself was thrown to the ground, narrowly avoiding a hail of autogun fire that smacked into the bodies.

"Shit," he muttered, reaching over to smack Chernov on the shoulder. "You want to get them firing, Major?"

Chernov spat in the dirt and stood up, shouting a firing order to the men as he opened up with his plasma gun. Lances of blue heat streaked across the rubble, blowing holes in the oncoming wave. Only when the first enemy troops started to fall, half vaporized, did Chernov realize they weren't really troops at all.

"Beastmen!" he shouted.

Rakatev looked up at him. "What?"

"They're beastmen!" Chernov screamed, zipping off another triple blast. His aim took down two of them, one without a leg, the other without a torso, but the rest kept coming. "We're screwed, sir!"

Rakatev rolled into a crouch and looked across the body barrier to confirm Chernov's appraisal. No sooner had he looked than the first beastman made it to the barricade and scaled it, right into Rakatev's lap.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 51: Marathon: Part 6: Titanfall/Further Plans_

In all the segmentum, the planet Marathon was perhaps the most well-thought out and symmetrical world. The equality mentality held by the planet's leadership was paramount in every design decision, from its irrigation ditches to the district layout of its Central Acropolis. Of course, this mentality extended to the public transport systems in place within the Acropolis, which led to the elevated skyways.

The skyways connected every district in the Acropolis, from the business plazas and markets to residential blocks and church quarters. The roadways were well planned, but with such a large complement of them, some confusion was inevitable. At some point, the city's planners realized, there had to be a nexus, a central location where all skyways converged to allow ease of access to every skyway. What resulted was the Tangle—a multi-thousand ton jumble of rockcrete and steel supports at the very heart of the city. From afar, it resembled a great ball of yarn rising from the cityscape. Up close, it was the most confusing jumble of inter-connecting roadways in existence.

Six hours before Rakatev was nearly beheaded by a raging monster, he led his mechanized column into the Tangle, where he then deposited Colonel Setsui and the Reapers of 3rd Company. Rakatev bade his fellow officer farewell and drove away, leading his Chimeras north toward the Stadium district. Setsui waved goodbye and hunkered down with his troops, spread throughout the Tangle on every accessible level.

To the south, the multiple vulture prongs of Raider-Colonel Arad's 4th Company engaged the Imperator Titan _Claw of the Omnisiah_. The hits were light, and not designed to do more than attract the monster's attention. The plan worked, and twenty-three Tallarn Dogs died in the opening salvo.

The rest of the vultures broke off the attack and gunned north, entering the Tangle and speeding down off the skyways and into the undercity. The _Claw_ followed, breaking into the Tangle's southernmost reaches with the impact of rockcrete on steel. Overpasses fell and supports crumbled under the god-engine's tread, but it kept moving.

It was here that the Reapers launched their attack, descending on the Titan with their jump packs and melta bombs.

The resulting contact was light, and did little more than weaken several places of tertiary importance across the walker's front. The Reapers disengaged quickly, though not without casualties; a full squad was lost, killed by the Titan's surface armaments.

The _Claw_ moved onward, breaking through the Tangle and through the skyways on the other side, where it promptly came under heavy tank fire from the north. The Leman Russes of the Marathon 75th Armored vented three salvoes before falling back into the cover of the stadium, rumbling through its massive substructure to safety. The _Claw_, without a clear shot, roared its displeasure at the stadium itself, and crushed its way through one side and into the field proper. The stadium, though raised above the undercity, was strong enough to support the Titan's weight. In all theory, it was a sound firing position for the god-machine that gave it clear sighting across most of the surrounding districts.

But someone else was already there, and they had a Baneblade.

The _Claw of the Omnisiah_ looked down at the tiny machine where it sat rumbling at the other end of the field. Its crew leaned forward in their chairs, peering at the tank with once-human eyes, appraising the figures perched atop it. What were they doing there, those foolish humans? Did they not know the power of a Titan when they saw one?

From the top of the _Unstoppable Advance_, Battle Saint Jax kept up a slow wave as the Titan's hellstorm cannon lit up. "Anytime, Dimitri," he spoke into his mic.

From beneath and half a kilometer away from the Stadium, Dimitri Vlasna relayed the order. Colonel Tyryr nodded and triggered the charges her 6th Company had laid beneath the Stadium, dropping the ground out from under the Titan. The god-machine fell over a hundred feet and landed very wrong, crushing the district beneath it. The Stadium collapsed around it, the entire structure caving in and covering the Titan in rubble.

The hellstorm cannon went off thirty seconds later, but with its barrel jammed firmly into the earth, the blast had nowhere to go but out.

The Stadium district, the rivers around it, and the _Claw of the Omnisiah _itself were completely destroyed. Fifty percent of the Titan's steel body was melted instantaneously, and over the next eighty-seven centuries, would be soaked into the soil beneath the Acropolis. As evolution ran its course, the corruption inherent in the melted remains would forever taint the soil and spread, causing the later inhabitants of Marathon no end of daemonic trouble, the least of which was the ghostly apparition of a titanic machine seen on foggy mornings.

Of course, none of that is relevant, as by that time all persons involved in this account were long since dead.

What is relevant is how Colonel Ivan Rakatev avoided being beheaded by a colossal beastman.

* * *

Rakatev twisted with the tackle, and despite the beastman's overwhelming strength and reflexes, it was not able to slow its own momentum. It careened past him and into the troop ramp of the command Chimera. Stunned by the blow to its head, the beastman stumbled in a circle before Rakatev put it down. Without time to unlimber his lasgun, he made do with a triple-shot from his bolt pistol.

"42nd Marathon, repel attackers!" he belted, standing to his full height and firing back at the oncomers. "Kill them all! For the—oh damn."

Another beastman scaled the barricade and made a swing at him. Rakatev ducked the blade and drove in with his chainsword and bolt pistol, impaling the creature through the sternum. The beastman growled in pain and Rakatev shot it in the face.

"Lang!" he shouted, shaking his face free of the abomination's blood. "Lang, get the Dogs on the line! Tell them we've got a serious perimeter breech and—"

"Something tells me they already know, sir!" His adjutant pointed down the line.

Rakatev looked and saw the Battle Saint scaling the body-wall with his retinue, laying into the beastmen as he moved. The glowing adamantium sword sang and bodies fell apart before him, blood washing the ground beneath his feet. Jax's white armor glowed where the impure blood spattered it, boiling the foul liquid into steam. His Equerry stood with him, flanked by his ever-present ratling guards and the hulking form of an Ultramarine dreadnought. Jax roared something, and the troops near him cheered in reply.

Rakatev smiled as he shot the next beastman to charge him. "Order the Chimeras loaded, Lang. I think we're about to move out."

* * *

The Astropathicus temple was quiet as night fell across the Acropolis, and with the departing of light came the sounds of dark. Where once insects had croaked from the gardens outside now came the distant noise of ground combat, heavy detonations and the rip-tear of massed Impaler fire.

"Someone's having fun," muttered Trooper Hale.

The Whiteshield sat on a fallen column at the top of the temple's main conduction dome. The bodies of the dead Astropaths had been burned earlier in the day, and the smell of cooked flesh still stained the area, causing most of the sentries no end of reflex gagging. Hale didn't mind so much, and occupied himself with a quick-heat can of soup.

Colonel Thade was at the center of the dome, kneeling beside the only survivor of the Chaos attack on the temple. She was a girl, not even sixteen years old. From what Thade could gather, she had passed out during the attack, and woken up under a mound of dead friends. It was a horrible fate, to be sure, but Thade found he was having trouble empathizing with the girl, chiefly because she reeked of the warp, and it was hard for him to breathe around her.

Eventually, he stood up and marched away, leaving her weeping on the stone.

"Problems, Colonel?" Hale asked.

"No more than normal," Thade replied. He looked back at the girl, who had by now collapsed on the ground, her body shaking with her sobs. "If her mind hasn't gone from all this shit, then the warp's going to take it."

Hale looked at him. The roof of the dome had been destroyed by artillery fire, and the moonlight shafting in across the young trooper's face made him look like a little too ghostly. His eyes bored into Thade.

"She touched, then?" he asked.

Thade nodded. "She's an Astropath, Hale. Being touched is her business."

"Hm," Hale replied, and said nothing more for a long moment. When he spoke again, it was quieter. "I could talk to her."

Thade laughed. "Okay, right."

"I'm serious," Hale said, deepening his voice in a way Thade had come to associate with Hale's attempts at being more adult. "I'm her age, and I don't get sick around warp stuff. Let me talk to her. All you need is for her to send a distress signal, right?"

Thade looked at him. "You're serious."

"I said I was."

"Well, fine. Talk to her," Thade said. Hale plopped his spoon in the soup can, picked up his helmet, and started forward. Thade stopped him. "Remember, just the distress signal."

Hale dismissed him with a wave and walked over to the young Astropath.

* * *

The last beastman didn't retreat. Dimitri suspected that self-preservation had been written out of their minds by whoever spliced their genes together, and although that was just speculation, he had convinced himself it was true. After all, he would have retreated if Jax was coming at him with that sword.

The last beastman died a moment later, cut into three pieces and left leaking hot blood into the gravel. Jax sheathed his blade and turned back to Dimitri.

"Stubborn, aren't they?"

Dimitri nodded, reloading. "Most definitely. Give me a second, okay?" He clicked his commlink and zeroed in a frequency. "One-Lead, this is Com2. Do you copy?"

"This is One-Lead," replied Thade. "I copy, Com2."

Dimitri zeroed the signal closer, tightening it past even sophisticated vox-cracking codes. The secure light blinked green, and he spoke freely. "Thade, what's the deal with the Astropathicus? Any survivors?"

"Only one, Vlasna. It's a girl, and so far I haven't got a damn thing out of the kid."

Dimitri shook his head. "You have to get something, Colonel. Otherwise this is all a waste of time."

"I know. I've got Hale working on it."

"That's not entirely reassuring."

"Believe me, I know. But at the moment, it may be our best shot. Give me ten minutes."

"Copy. Vlasna out." Dimitri swapped channels, secured it, and spoke again. "Manker, please report."

"City secure."

Dimitri blinked and looked at Jax. The Battle Saint frowned, and Dimitri looked back at his visor. "Uh, come again?"

"The city is secure, Equerry," Manker repeated. "2nd Company and the Blackened Guard have isolated and destroyed all pockets of resistance. 4th Company's vultures are encircling and destroying any surface remnants, and any survivors have gone to ground. The 6th, 2nd, and 4th Companies are all moving to Rally Point Betasar to prepare for further operations."

"Oh," Dimitri managed. "Then, um, good work. We'll be there shortly."

Manker replied by disconnecting on him. Somehow, Dimitri wasn't all that offended by it.

Jax sheathed his sword and started moving back to the Chimeras, stepping across the carpet of dead beastmen, his footfalls drawing squirts of gore from the ruptured bodies. Dimitri followed with Menshaw and Sternev, with Tarrius bringing up the rear.

"**A fine battle, my friends," **Tarrius said, scooping the ratlings up onto his shoulders with a power claw. Sternev was grinning, but Menshaw seemed to take the unwilling scooping as an insult.

"Let me down, damnit!" he hissed. "Where do you get off picking me up like that?"

Tarrius chuckled. **"Come now, Grumbel. Should a warrior not ride high upon his victories and celebrate his heroism? You have both acquitted yourselves well, and such rides are no hindrance to me."**

Menshaw found that he couldn't argue with that, and relaxed against Tarrius's vertical exhaust pipes. Next to him, Sternev stood like a hero on the Dreadnought's broad shoulder, riding him all the way into the Chimera.

* * *

Rally Point Betasar, Thirty Minutes Later

* * *

For the first time since the morning, the Dogs of War Legion was all in one place, and along with their allies in the Marathon resistance they had fortified the Grand Cathedral in the Cult District. Commissar cadets and Marathon tankers patrolled the grounds alongside the power-armored Dogs, keeping watch over their small patch of turf in the destroyed Acropolis.

The Titan was dead, the city reclaimed, and spirits were high for the common trooper. Inside the Cathedral itself, however, things were a tad on the testy side.

* * *

They held the war council in what was left of the main prayer hall after the purging flamer treatment the Mordians had given it throughout the day. The whole place stank of smoke and promethium, but so long as it was purified and had a roof overhead, it would make do as a briefing center.

In the interest of productivity, Dimitri had restricted the war council to only the most senior officers from each represented faction, and only two representatives from the Dogs Legion itself. The latter was purely a diplomacy choice, to promote cooperation between the Marathon personnel and the Dogs. The way Dimitri, and Jax, for that matter, saw it, they were all in the same voidship, power armor or not.

That said, his precautions had done little to staunch the shouting.

"That's a load of grox-shit and you know it, sir!" shouted Ana Tyryr, one of the biggest opponents of Jax's new plan. Dimitri was regretting her choice as one of the officers let in on this meeting. "They wouldn't help us for all the money in the Administratum, so why should we waste our time and lives to help them?"

Colonel Tamdrake, the Marathon tank commander, seemed to agree. "I'm Marathon, born and bred, but even I'm not hopped up enough on propaganda to try that. They're every bit as loyal as us, but when it comes down to it, we can't save them. We just don't have the resources."

"I agree," said Colonel Thade. "We just killed a _Titan_, and according to our astropath, reinforcements are on the way. I say we cut our losses and wait."

Great, so no help from him, either. Dimitri shook his head and looked at the two people who hadn't yet spoken. "Colonel Rakatev, Scholar Martel? What are your thoughts on this issue?"

Rakatev shifted on his feet and rubbed his remaining eye nervously. "Look, Vlasna, I was there on Dancer. I saw them first hand, and from what I gathered—even though it's not my place to judge them—I think they're good men. I say it's worth a shot."

Good, Dimitri thought, that's one. "Scholar?"

Martel looked up at him. Earlier in the day, Martel had looked fragile and old. But now, empowered as he was by the borrowed suit of Dog armor, he was every bit the imposing, dominating instructor Dimitri had known as an orphan at the Scholam. That realization simultaneously scared and humored him.

"'He who abandons his fellow man, of any race or creed, has abandoned a brother, and thus forfeits his humanity'," he said.

Dimitri smiled. "Gideon Ravenor, _The Spheres of Longing_. Does that mean you're in?"

"I dare say it does."

"Good, and well said, by the way." Dimitri looked at Jax. "Well?"

Jax leaned forward, resting his knuckles on the lectern, and looked at Tyryr. "I get where you're coming from. They can be assholes a lot of the time, and maybe they wouldn't help us. Tamdrake? You're right, too: maybe we don't have the resources to make this easy. Maybe we will lose some people, but we won't lose all of them. Know why? Because Thade here hit it right on the head: we killed a Titan today."

The Battle Saint smirked. "I believe that if we could do that, with minimal casualties like we did, then we owe it to these guys to mount a rescue mission. They're under siege by the enemy, people, and it doesn't matter if they would tell us to get lost in the same situation, because the fact that we are going to help them makes us better than they ever will be. After all, that's what makes us more human than them.

"Do you understand me now?"

Colonel Thade was the first to cave, tossing his helmet on the pew in front of him and saluting. "Sorry for doubting you, Battle Saint."

Jax shrugged. "It happens."

As Thade marched from the chamber, Tamdrake sighed and nodded, acknowledging his defeat. Tyryr, however, was more defiant.

"You're really going to help them?" she asked.

"As best I can," Jax said. "And you're going to help."

Tyryr huffed, blowing a strand of dyed hair out of her face. "Fine," she spat, before stomping out of the room.

Rakatev and Martel watched her go. "She's kind of insubordinate," Rakatev observed.

"But quite shapely," Martel said, drawing odd looks from the rest of the men. "What?" he grinned. "I'm eighty-two years old. If admiring a pretty lady's a crime, then hang me."

Dimitri laughed. "I don't think there's any need for that, Scholar."

"Anyway," Jax said as he stepped down from the lectern, "we've got work to do. After all, these Assturds ain't gonna save themselves."

* * *

Yevina Cardigan was sitting in the Cathedral's courtyard when Hale found her. For Yevina, her entire knowledge of Trooper Hale came from the legion rumor mill. Stories of the Teenaged Hero of Kasr Whateverthehell ranged from cannibalism to soullessness, and although Yevina wasn't sold on any of them, she couldn't help admitting that Hale was a little on the weird side.

Animal Mother intercepted Hale before he could get much closer. "Do you need something?" he asked.

Hale glared at him. "Yeah. I want to talk to the navigator, Catachan, so either get out of my way or I'll go through you."

The fusion ports along Animal's back irised open wider as the power plant within kicked into high gear. Animal tensed, ready for a fight, but Yevina stopped him.

"It's okay, Jayne," she said. "Let him through."

Animal shuffled aside reluctantly and let Hale pass. The Whiteshield had the decency not to provoke Animal with a grin, and as he approached, Yevina noticed what he was leading behind him.

"Who is that?" she asked, pointing at the malnourished girl.

"This is Merity Cetrius," Hale said, leading the girl to sit on the fountain beside Yevina. "She's an Astropath, and the reason we have any reinforcements coming at all."

Merity Cetrius sat where she was told, but didn't let go of Hale's arm. Whatever stability she had regained in the past hours had come from him, and she wasn't about to let go for a moment.

"Why are you bringing her to me?" Yevina asked.

Hale stared at her. "We're about to move into the plains outside the city. For my part, I will be part of an elite infiltration team."

"And you need someone to watch her," Yevina finished. She laid a hand on the girl's shoulder, not budging even when she was flinched at. "You don't have anything to worry about, Merity. I'm Ms. Cardigan. You're safe here."

Merity didn't let go of Hale, but the Whiteshield didn't give her time. He walked away without another word, sending the young Astropath into a sobbing fit.

Yevina had just pulled her into a hug, the gentle act undermined by her yellow power armor, when Animal spoke up. "What a jackass," the Catachan muttered.

"Maybe," Yevina admitted, "but maybe not."

Animal looked at her. "You'll have to explain that."

Yevina smiled and adjusted the band over her third eye. "He made it a point to keep this girl safe, even after she'd done her job. Doesn't that give him some credit?"

* * *

Just as the sun slipped behind the Eternal Peaks and night returned to the plains below the mountains, something monumental occurred. A supersonic bang swooped down from the peaks, slamming across the Chaos siegeworks as a wave of sound. The foremost slaves and cultists were knocked down, the impact of the wave bursting their eardrums. Irradiated dirt blew up from the earth in rivulets, like the sea breaking against a long beach. Men flinched, artillery fire ceased, and for a long moment, all was quiet as the Archenemy listened to the echo fade away across the barren plains.

Standing atop the command siege engine, Adamus Luchance grinned. The energy barrier had fallen; the Sky Fortress was open for the taking.

Kharn led the first charge up the slopes, roaring and hooting at the head of four thousand worshipers of the Blood God. They were armed with everything from autoguns to pick-axes. It was a trip made only by the most stupid novice or the most experienced veteran, and a trip that, in the end, only Kharn returned from. The rest of his followers died at the front gates of the Fortress, cut down by automated defenses and the precise bolter fire of a besieged chapter.

Kharn came back in a huff, cursing even as he dropped the only kill of the night in front of Blackheart's throne. It was a Son of Marathon, to be sure, even with the chapter insignia split open and half covered with gore.

"Take it," growled the Betrayer, before stalking from the top deck.

Adamus moved aside to let him pass before looking over at Mettarion. "Glad he's happy," he said.

"He'll get his turn," replied the Iron Warrior. "I'll see to that. Sergeant Torassus! Tell the earthworks to move up the parallel another half-kilometer. I want a full defilade for the artillery by midnight, understood?"

As orders rang out through the command deck, Adamus made his way down through the siege crawler to the ground. There was work to be done. His forces would be needed for the final push, and the rest of his beastmen had been given free run of the plains. It was his understanding that a few had ventured back into the Acropolis, but it would be a simply matter of Omnios calling them back with the beacon. He could have simply made the order with a vox-call, but it had become dreadfully boring in the crawler. The Blood Reaver had a bad habit of ranting.

It was only when he was outside the crawler and in the night air that he spotted Malek, and he stopped in his tracks. The Night Lord champion was stalking through the dirt toward the crawler with a trio of fellow Astartes. His armor was chipped and broken in places, and a red stain of dried blood was running down his gut plating. Adamus didn't care about that, really. Malek was completely inept, too set in his stealth tactics to understand a real battle if it came up and bit him in his overly-grim arse.

No, what he did care about, and what had him stopping dead in his tracks to watch the Night Lord walk past, was the object jutting out of Malek's shoulder pauldron: an 8mm spike.

"Malek! Stop right there!" Adamus shouted.

"What do you want?" Malek asked, turning to face him.

Adamus grabbed the spike and yanked it out, holding it in front of Malek's face. "Where did this hit you?"

One of Malek's Night Lords reached out to grab him. Adamus span the spike around and drove it into the Night Lord's face, breaking the ceramite and super-hardened skull beneath. The dead Astartes slammed to the ground and its comrades brought up their bolters.

Adamus shook wet brains off the spike and smacked it against Malek's head. "Where did this hit you?" he repeated.

"The Acropolis," Malek growled. "We were ambushed."

"Figures, with your stupidity," Adamus shot back. "Was he armored?"

Malek scoffed. "_They_ were armored, yes."

"How many?" Adamus demanded.

"A lot. Maybe a thousand, I don't know. Why? Have you faced them before?"

Adamus let go of Malek and marched off into the night.

**Author's Note: I actually don't have much to say here, so I won't, aside from a warning that some heavy-hitting doo-doo is coming down the pipe in these next two chapters.**

**See you then.**


	52. Chapter 52: Sons: Fortress of the Sky

The siege of the Sky Fortress was in its seventh hour. Rocket artillery lanced up the mountain pass, augmented by long range howitzers and point-to-point las batteries. The fortress walls, heavy obsidian marble sheathed in ceramite and ornate adamantium, shook beneath the sustained barrage. Every hour, the barrage would let up long enough to allow an infantry charge to assault the front gate. So far, none had made it through, and the watermark of bolt-ridden bodies was growing at an astonishing rate.

For the loyalist defenders, the siege was exacting a psychological toll. Even for the superhuman Astartes, fighting nonstop was an impossible task. With every charge the Sons of Marathon faltered just a little more, lost just a little more accuracy, and came all that much closer to a fatal slip-up.

On the plains below the mountains, the armies of Chaos were growing closer by the second. Trenches sprouted in the dirt, growing further into the mountain passes like a fungus. The siege engine moved forward on its four colossal legs, gun batteries and pintle-cannons flashing shots into the far-off fortress.

All the Chaos commanders watched the proceedings with interest, all heads facing toward the Sky Fortress except for one. Alone at the rear of the command deck, Adamus Luchance watched the barren plains that stretched to the Acropolis, his fingers drumming on the pommel of his sword, waiting.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 52: The Sons of Marathon: Part 1: Fortress of the Sky_

Sometimes, in the middle of sleep, he remembered fragments of himself. Snippets of memory, of battles fought, and of violence. Las-blasts carving mud out of a trench wall, blood spraying out of a cut throat, a friend screaming as his face melted under a wave of burning promethium. He remembered people, too; a bearded man laughing; an old man staring at him through a scope; a man with sharp eyes and a peaked cap; friends, all nameless, all long since dead. And somewhere deeper and clearer than all the rest of the memories was a planet, dying in the black of space, its surface alight before winking out permanently. Every time he saw it, he felt cold.

He wondered what his name was.

"Roverson! Roverson, are we clear?"

Specialist Rover Roverson checked his firing vectors a third time before bringing his hand down. It was all the reply he needed to give, and the rest of the team understood perfectly.

In spread formation, each crouched low, the infiltration team moved up past him. Trooper Hale was the first one, followed by Sergeant Fallar and the two ratlings, and finally Equerry Vlasna. The Battle Saint himself brought up the very rear, and as everyone else moved away into the darkened plains, Jax stopped next to Roverson.

"You all right?"

"No," Roverson replied. "But I can fight."

Jax frowned. "Still not know who ya are?"

"No clue."

"Ya want a new name?"

"No, Rover works."

"Okay," Jax said. "We'll talk more later."

The Battle Saint moved on, leaving Roverson behind for the moment. The specialist stayed put for a moment, looking across the darkened plains. He ran the environment through his helm's image intensifier and checked it against the map scan in his memory. Their position and relation to the target confirmed, Roverson moved up the line again.

* * *

The way the infiltration team made it into the Sky Fortress was completely dependant upon an oversight by the Chaos coalition. By necessity, the post-shield advance on the loyalists had to be conducted quickly, which forced the Iron Warriors overseeing the siege to pull in auxiliary support from the siegeworks' flanks in order to press the trench advance. This left them completely open to flankward attacks, and though such an attack was highly unlikely, it still allowed free, unobservable passage to anyone in need of it.

Utilizing one of theses blind spots, Rover Roverson led the infiltration team up into the mountains. After five hours of wandering, they came upon a rear entrance to the Sky Fortress, hidden to all but the keenest of scouts. The fact that Roverson spied it was incredible, and gave the lone Astartes guarding the gate a significant pause.

When he found his voice, he spoke loudly and clearly, and with what he hoped was an intimidating boom.

"Who goes there?"

Jax, Dimitri, Menshaw, Sternev, Fallar and Hale came to a halt, the rocks breaking under their boots. The voice echoed away down the hidden pass. Roverson looked back up at the Son of Marathon behind the gate wall. A bolter stared back at him.

Dimitri replied. "Battle Saint Fredrick Jax and select representatives from the Dogs of War Legion!" He ignored Menshaw's snickers and went on. "We request admittance to the Fortress!"

The bolter didn't move. Roverson looked back at Jax. "I can take him out."

Jax's voice was low. "How? Only way's to use yer rifle, and he'd just shoot you before you could do it."

"I see a few other ways," Hale said.

Roverson arched an eyebrow. "How many?"

"13. How about you?"

"24." Roverson grinned. "Trust me, kid. You aren't that good."

Hale opened his mouth to continue, but Jax cut him off.

"Both of you shut up. We aren't killing the sentry."

Up on the gate wall, the Astartes wasn't so sure he'd been intimidating enough, so he put a bolt into the ground next to Roverson's foot. Rock exploded across the scout's shin guard, leaving bits of exposed gunmetal behind.

Roverson looked at Jax.

"Okay, fine," Jax said. "Be ready on my word. Dimitri? You got some diplomacy here, bud?"

Dimitri up his hands, palms open, and stepped to the front of the group. "We're here to help, Astartes. The Battle Saint and myself both served with your brothers on Dancer IV two years ago. We want to repay your chapter for that kindness."

"Dancer?" The Son of Marathon leaned forward. "What is your name?"

"I am Dimitri Vlasna, Equerry to the Battle Saint."

The bolter went away and the Space Marine tore off his yellow helm, revealing a bald head with a clean, young jaw. But then, as far as Dimitri was concerned, every Astartes had a bald head and a clean, young jaw. This Son of Marathon was unknown to him.

His confusion must have been quite evident, as the Space Marine caught on and reintroduced himself.

"I am Brother-Sergeant Hastrel, Equerry. I was one of the two squad leaders that reinforced you on Dancer. I was with you in the final battle against Narkull in Thantos Hive."

Now Dimitri remembered him. Hastrel was the nicer of the two sergeants that had came to help on Dancer. Hastrel had been the more human one, at least in the way that he had accepted Jax as a saint. The other sergeant had been less faithful.

Throne, had it really been as long ago as Dancer that Jax became a saint? It seemed preposterous.

"Hastrel, it's good to see you again!" Dimitri hollered up.

"Likewise, Equerry! Give me a minute to open the gate and I'll lead you in myself. I can imagine quite a few of my brothers would like to see the Battle Saint in the flesh."

Hastrel disappeared from the gate wall. A moment later and the gate groaned open, revealing the fortress grounds beyond.

* * *

In another life, Jax had fought on the defensive end of a siege against the zerg at a Mar Saran spaceport. The battle lasted five days and nights of heavy fighting, but it wasn't until the dawn of the third day that a scythe broke his visor and he had to deal with the smells of the siege—backed up sewage, blood and sickness, death, spent gunpowder and the bodies of the enemy dead.

In this reality, the smells were the same, but in some ways worse. The sewage was cold, freezing in the mountain air; the blood was fresh; the gunpowder thicker; the enemy dead reeked brimstone and a sickness all their own.

Ammo servitors worked as their diseased flesh sloughed from their bodies, too mono-tasked to stop and acknowledge the agony. The Astartes didn't care, either; they were too busy fighting or waiting to be bothered.

Jax wondered if they even noticed the servitors.

Hastrel led the infiltration team through the Sky Fortess to the main wall. On the way they passed the barracks buildings, training halls, armories, landing pads, and squad chapels that the Sons of Marathon lived, ate, and slept in. This was the beating heart of the chapter, and it was dying. The stone and ceramite buildings were pitted heavily by airburst shrapnel, and even now whole blocks were being leveled by earthshaker artillery. The Sons' own artillery was on display in the main paradeground, where it had been assembled for one colossal return volley after the shield failed. It had done little but zero their location.

Jax reached out and touched a gutted Whirlwind missile tank as they passed. "You guys lost a lot here."

"That is a severe understatement," Hastrel said, leading them onto a rubbled avenue. "Do you see the Spire of Collaboration?"

"No."

"Exactly." Hastrel picked up a piece of brick and tossed it back to Dimitri.

Jax leaned over. "What is it?"

"Part of the Spire," Dimitri replied quietly.

Jax didn't know what to say to that, so he kept quiet.

They reached the wall a few minutes later. Jax and Dimitri made their way up with Hastrel, leaving the rest of the team below. At the top, they had to shuffle around the Sons posted on the line. Dealing with the unwieldy combination of heavy weapons and power armor on a narrow walk proved difficult, and Dimitri almost fell several times before they reached the central hard point.

"Brother-Captain." Hastrel made the sign of the aquilla. "We have guests: Battle Saint Fredrick Jax and Equerry Vlasna."

The big Space Marine turned from the siegeworks to look at them. Dawn was still a way off, and his face was lit only by torchlight. He looked old and gnarled, and Dimitri couldn't decide if it was the lighting or his face really was as creased as it looked. Three service studs were imbedded in the captain's forehead, each denoting a half-century of enemies slain and worlds saved. He was a hero, to be sure, and older than all the infiltration team combined.

He saw Jax, and dropped to one knee.

"No, no, no," Jax said, pulling the captain back up. "That's not necessary."

"It is an honor, Battle Saint," the captain said, clapping Jax on the shoulders. "I am Captain Pontius, commander of the Sons of Marathon Third Company, and current head of the Sky Fortress." Pontius frowned. "Or what is left of it, that is."

"How many men are left to you, Captain?" Dimitri asked.

"Ninety-three," Pontius replied. "All the Third was on-site for refitting and re-training when the Archenemy sprang his trap. I wasn't able to get a message through the mind-jammers in orbit, though, so we're somewhat cut off from the rest of the chapter."

"The rest of the chapter?" Jax asked.

Pontius nodded. "Yes. Chapter Master Phillida himself is leading them in a crusade on Corsair-held Heramire, though I think most of his targets are here."

Jax walked to the wall and looked down past the mounds of dead to the trenches below. From this distance, the siegeworks were little more than lines of signal flame. Labor chants in disgusting languages reached him in the dark and hurt his ears.

"I'll be blunt with you, Captain." Dimitri leaned against the wall, arms crossed, trying desperately to hide his exhaustion. "We have a full legion of power-armored Dogs of War waiting in the Acropolis. They have fast attack and armor support, and they're ready to go at a moment's notice. The only question left is how we want to take the enemy."

Captain Pontius smiled. The natural cracks of age and scars turned it into a smirk, but the point still came across. "I have a few ideas," he replied.

Rally Point Betasar, the Central Acropolis

Trooper Methal pushed himself into the _Unstoppable Advance_'s turret and shook his commander by the shoulder. "Colonel? Vox call from the infiltration team."

Tamdrake shot up in his seat and hammered his head against a cross strut. "What is it, Methal?"

"Vox call from the infiltration team," Methal repeated, handing over the vox horn. "They had to use our vox. None of the others have enough power."

Tamdrake took the horn and adjusted himself before putting it to his ear. Daylight was leaking in through the open top hatch, and Tamdrake had to squint as he wiped sleep from his eyes.

"Throne, what time is it?" he asked to no one in particular.

"0530," both Methal and Dimitri answered in tandem.

Tamdrake covered the receiver. "Go make some recaf or something."

"Yes sir. Sorry sir."

As Methal scurried out of sight, Tamdrake got back to the receiver. "Okay, Vlasna. Go ahead."

Vlasna sounded tired. But then, Tamdrake had only known Dimitri Vlasna for a short time, and couldn't possibly know by now that this was no special occurrence: the Equerry was always tired.

"We've made it into the Sky Fortress and have made contact with the Sons of Marathon. You are clear for phase two operations."

That was all Tamdrake needed to hear. "Thank you, Equerry. Take care."

"Likewise," Dimitri said, but Tamdrake didn't hear him. He was already swapping channels.

The signal locked in on a new frequency and stabilized.

"General Manker, this is Colonel Tamdrake. We're clear to move out."

The Sky Fortress

As night retreated from the snowcapped Eternity Peaks, it took with it the whistle-bang of incoming artillery, and with the dawn came a renewed wave of attackers. The forces of Chaos, this time led by a contingent of red-armored Berserkers of the World Eaters Legion, poured up the pass toward the Sky Fortress's main gate. The cultists and fallen Astartes crossed the body piles laid down by previous charges without pause, charging into the Imperial guns. The gunfire, however, was less than it should have been. In the previous day and night of charges, the Archenemy had soaked up much of the Sons' ammunition stores. Now, the thunder that rained upon the enemy was less, and the enemy knew it, hence the Berserkers had come out to play.

The feeling amongst Chaos was that this charge would herald the fall of the Fortress's gates, and with them, become the turning point of the siege. Thus, the Berserkers were there in all their bloody splendor, skulls and blood and death surrounding their hulking forms. And at the lead of them all ran Kharn the Betrayer, baying madness and hacking into cultists with the blade of his colossal axe, Gorechild. Bolter fire streaked down to meet him, but to little effect. Fully half the shots missed him, and what did hit was completely ineffectual. He was unstoppable. The gates would fall.

"That's him?" Jax asked, looking down from the gate wall.

"Yes," replied Captain Pontius. "He came with the first wave. We cut into them with everything. Barely a handful reached the walls, and those that did died quickly, except him."

"What happened?" Dimitri asked. He didn't look at Pontius; he couldn't tear his eyes away from Kharn.

Pontius swallowed, trying to quell some of his rage. "He climbed the ramparts and killed Brother Slavus with that axe. Then he retreated, taking Slavus's body with him."

Next to them, Specialist Roverson grimaced. "They're going to break through so long as we keep shooting from up here."

"What would you do, Roverson?" Jax asked.

Roverson shrugged. "Go down there and kill the guy yourself. Break their morale."

"Kharn?" Dimitri asked.

"The guy with the axe and the shouting problem."

Dimitri stared at Roverson. "You don't ask much, do you?"

"Just an idea."

Jax spat a glob of phlegm on the wall and looked at Pontius. "What about it, Captain? You in or out?"

In reply, Pontius drew his power sword.

Jax grinned. "Well, alrighty then."

* * *

Kharn stopped twenty meters from the wall, squared himself with the defenders, and took aim with his plasma pistol. Bolts smacking into the body carpet around him, Kharn fired three times, each one vaporizing one of the Sons of Marathon defending the gate ramparts. Kharn laughed at this as the cultists and Berserkers finally caught up with him, charging past for the gate itself.

Two figures dropped from the walls and carved into the wave of attackers. Blood sprayed, bodies fell, and in less than a minute, the advance guard lay dead on the ground before the massive gate.

The tallest of the two, the warrior in a white make of power armor Kharn had never seen, yanked his sword out of a Berserker's neck and let the body fall to the ground. He looked up at Kharn.

"Whoops. Looks like we killed yer best pals."

Kharn laughed. "Khorn cares not from whom the blood flows, so long as it flows! Right, Gorechild?"

Kharn shook his axe as he went on, his voice high-pitched. "Absolutely, Great Kharn sir! Blood flows! Blood flows!"

Jax looked sidelong at Pontius. "Did his axe just talk?"

"I believe he made it talk."

Jax lowered his sword for a moment. "Is he fucking nuts?"

Pontius was about to respond when Kharn launched himself forward, axe coming down for Jax's head. The Confederate leapt back and swung his blade up, its pure adamantium edge spanging against the roaring teeth of the chainaxe. Kharn rolled with the block and kicked Jax in the gut. With Jax off balance, Kharn brought up his plasma pistol and fired it at point blank range, the white-hot flash blinding the onlookers.

Jax absorbed the blast, coiled it within himself, and forced it back out instantaneously. The subsequent detonation was brilliant, knocking Kharn back and sending the bodies at their feet into shockwave seizures. Jax fell into the bodies, sinking into a pile of cultists that butted against the gate itself.

No sooner had Kharn landed than Pontius was on him, driving down with his power sword. Gorechild held against the attack and forced Pontius away with a glancing blow to the arm that bit through ceramite and opened the Son's bicep. Blood sprayed from the cut and Kharn hoped up, forcing Pontius onto the backfoot with blow after blow from his toddler-sized axe head.

"KILL YOUR FACE! DRINK YOUR BLOOD! BLEED YOU FOR THE SKULL KING!"

Kharn was raving, to his axe and to the gods, as he laid into Pontius. The whirring adamantine teeth bit into armor, thrashed electronics, split flesh, drew blood, ruined muscle. Pontius twisted to avoid a heavy killstroke and lost his left pauldron completely, the ceramite shattering and coming away under the daemonic weight. The Marathon insignia exploded under the impact, shattering into the mountain wind.

Pontius roared and slammed Kharn to the ground, driving his power sword through the Betrayer's stomach. For a moment, he thought he had won, but he should have known better.

Kharn howled and brought Gorechild around for Pontius's neck. Pontius watched it coming for the split second before it hit. He knew it was a kill stroke, knew it was a strong swing, and knew that without a pauldron any more, he hadn't a hope in surviving this.

The next thing he felt was a searing, incredible pain as the tendons of his neck and the bone encasing his vertebrae was shredded. It was excruciating, but it only lasted for the millisecond before his brain was separated from his spine.

Captain Pontius's head fell from his shoulders. Blood churned out of his stumped neck, spilling across the dented fascia of his Aquilla armor in runnels. When he finally collapsed, he did it with an unceremonial thud of heavy armor hitting dirt.

Kharn pushed his corpse aside and stood up, pulling the power sword from his stomach without so much as a grunt of discomfort. He picked the gristle of Pontius's throat from Gorechild's teeth and pulled a piece of shredded geneseed organ from the hilt jam. Kharn tested it between thumb and forefinger like a fruit and slipped it into his breath grille. He was still chewing when Jax rose, blood spattered and grimacing, from a mound of corpses.

A gust of frigid wind hit the battlefield, blowing steam off Jax's heated armor and dragging his soaked cape to a weak flap. "You killed him," he growled. "I'm going to kill you back."

Kharn grunted. "The Blood God awaits me on his Brazen Throne of Skulls!"

"Then let's send you on your way, mother fucker."

**Author's Note: So, the Fall of Marathon arc ended last chapter and opened up the Sons of Marathon arc this chapter. Why the difference? Because things got too cluttered and I wanted to further differentiate the importance of the Siege of the Sky Fortress as opposed to the rest of the war. This will be a three chapter arc to wrap up what has become more of a saga than a stepping stone in our story, and then we'll move on to... other tasks. Most involve aliens, and maybe a little extra-dimensional travel in one of them. Who knows?**

**See you next time for Chapter 53: Jax vs Kharn.**


	53. Chapter 53: Sons: Kharn versus Jax

Harken Manker held his Impaler in one hand and rested his other on the Baneblade's main gun, feeling the bump and jostle of the cannon as the super heavy tank thundered across the open plains. As a Kriegan, Manker had participated in plenty of joint armor-infantry operations in his life, and had ridden on many different tracked vehicles, from Chimeras to the venerable Leman Russes that so dominated Imperial armies. All were fine vehicles, crewed by fine and dedicated soldiers. Indeed, this advance in particular was fronted by a full division of Leman Russes and backed by the transport capacity of Marathon mechanized infantry Chimeras.

But here at the spearhead of the attack, Manker realized the fundamental difference between a Baneblade and any other tank: sheer, unfiltered _power_. Where a lesser vehicle crested a dune, the Baneblade flattened it; where a Chimera moved with a depression, the Baneblade plowed a trench. Where a Leman Russ stopped to finish off a squad of straggling Chaos troopers, the Baneblade ran them down and let Manker watch as their blood splashed across the dust-washed side panels.

Now, Manker liked to think of himself as a hard-bitten, cold individual, but even he wasn't detached enough to be unimpressed by the tank's power. "What's its name?" he asked the commander.

Tamdrake, who had till then been keeping the formation together remotely, lowered his voxhorn and looked at Manker. "Come again?"

"The tank's name."

"Oh." Tamdrake nodded and grinned. The expression cracked the dust caked to his cheeks. "_Unstoppable Advance._"

"Appropriate."

As Tamdrake went back to his vox and the column behind and around them fluctuated with his commands, Manker went back to looking ahead. Far in front of them, past the blacked patch of ground where Waterdown Base had stood just a week and a half before, the siegworks and battlements of the Archenemy rose from the hardpan, churning the mountain passes as they crept closer to the Sky Fortress of the Sons of Marathon.

Manker knew what had to be done, and was under no illusions as to the casualties it would take to achieve his goal. Many of the Dogs and their allies would not make it through the coming fight, but Manker was prepared to accept those losses.

Distantly, the noise barely audible over the growling Baneblade, drifted the crackle of massed small arms. The artillery had stopped, and another charge against the Fortress was under way.

Behind his cross-visored helm, Manker grimaced. No doubt the Battle Saint was involved in the current fight, probably in direct conflict with one of the Archenemy's champions. Manker thought about praying for him, but didn't in the end. After all, what use was a saint if he needed the begged protection of his own patriarch?

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 53: The Sons of Marathon: Part 2: Kharn versus Jax_

To date, nothing had withstood the pure adamantium sword Jax carried, and thus the Battle Saint had thought it capable of cutting anything. Dimitri had agreed, of course; any blade forged by the Fabricator General of the Mechanicus himself must be an incredible one at that. Dimitri had seen Jax work the blade through the toughest of steels, through starship plate, ceramite, and other adamantium subsets.

But now, watching the blade grind against the whirring teeth of Kharn's axe without so much as stopping the rotation, Dimitri began to doubt the sword's mettle.

Kharn seemed to have something similar on his mind. "You can't cut Gorechild, fool!"

The Betrayer brought a knee up into the Confederate's gut and smacked him in the helmet. Jax tumbled back, his armor jerking from the gut-blow, and landed on the pile of dead outside the Fortress gate.

Kharn swung down with his axe, but Jax blocked it again. And again, and again. It was impressive that Jax was able to block so effectively from the ground, but it also meant that he hadn't a prayer of getting to his feet. Kharn had him pinned.

"Gorechild was forged by Ferrus himself!" he roared. "All you have is that pretty sword!"

The axe came down again, spanging from the sword's haft-guard. Sparks shot from the grinding point as Kharn worked his weight into the shove.

"SHOW ME SOME MORE TRICKS!" Kharn howled.

Jax punched him in the face and kicked him back. His opened up, the palm glowing with an intense white light.

"How about this?"

The blast and ensuing flash of holy light blinded every man, Astartes, and half-mutated Chaos thing in the valley. It could be seen from the siegeworks below the pass, and by the armored column beyond that. Ceramite and rockcrete and dust exploded from the Fortress wall. Dimitri blinked away the sunspots saw Jax on his feet, facing the destruction.

Kharn pushed himself out of the wall. Jax's energy blast had scorched his armor and broken off a piece of his helmet, shattering the visor. Kharn yanked it off and roared.

"We're not done!" he shouted, plasma pistol coming up. "Get over here!"

Jax emptied his flak pistol into Kharn's chest and blew the plasma pistol out of his hand. Before he could reload or grab his Impaler, the Betrayer was upon him, Gorechild swinging for his neck.

Dimitri watched Jax take the hit on his shoulder pad and reply with the last reserves of his pent-up energy. The blast was just as mighty as the previous one, but Kharn punched Jax's hand aside and the beam of light ended up frying a pile of bodies and part of the cliff face.

Rocks the size of a Dreadnought tumbled down onto the combatants, crushing a large portion of the assaulting troopers and two of the Sons of Marathon deployed outside the walls. The Confederate and the Betrayer didn't seem to notice them, and kept fighting even as the rocks slammed down around them.

A boulder connected with Jax, knocking him off balance on the carpet of dead bodies. Kharn swung in and landed a hit against Jax's hip, the teeth grinding through Neo-steel and flesh. The spinning adamantine teeth tore tendons and chewed bone, but the Battle Saint growled and fought back, driving his sword into Kharn's left lung. Blood spewed from between the Betrayer's teeth as he hissed an oath to whatever fell god he worshiped.

Locked together, they stumbled across the pass beating and cutting on one another, cursing and roaring and grunting. There was no skill involved, no careful measuring of strengths and weaknesses. No, even from so high up Dimitri could understand the fight perfectly—it was muscle to muscle, mass to mass, man to man.

Dimitri watched as they fought, slipping and kicking across the bodies, up until they were lost in the press of corrupted reinforcements flowing up toward the Fortress walls. Now with enough dead piled at the walls to make a kind of natural ladder for them to scale the Fortress, the newest attackers had become a real problem.

One of the Astartes nearby called out a firing order, the bolters started up, and Dimitri joined the fight at the wall. Suddenly, Jax's fight with Kharn wasn't as important anymore.

* * *

"War Captain, news from the front!"

Adamus didn't turn to look at Drake, and for good reason. At this height from the command deck of the siege engine, he could see the developing battle at the gates with some ease. Specifics were a problem, but he could at least get a general sense of the battle by watching the blobs of men clash with the wall, and by listening to their deaths on the wind. Yes, Adamus knew the tone of the battle, and by extension, what Drake was about to report.

"He is there," Adamus said.

Drake was silent a moment. Adamus grinned as he imagined the stupid look on the former Blood Angel's face. "Yes, War Captain. He is."

"Good." Adamus turned to the man next to him. "Does this change things, Mettarion?"

The Warsmith's mouth was tight as he spoke. "Barely. This Battle Saint, would he be outside the gates?"

Adamus didn't know, so he looked at Drake, which cleared the matter up quickly with an affirmative.

Mettarion nodded and looked at the Iron Warrior next to him. "Tell the artillery to commence firing. Drag trajectories back to the killing field. I want everything there dead, including this damned Saint."

Adamus stepped away from the edge and walked over to Drake. He spoke in hushed tones. "Listen carefully: the Battle Saint is going to survive this bombardment, and he will probably survive whatever dispute he is no doubt having with Kharn right now. What happens next is up to us. It is us who can bring him down."

"Yes, War Captain."

"Ready my Thunderhawk."

"Yes, War Captain."

Drake walked away, vox chattering. Below, the artillery kicked up again, and in the pass by the gate, the ground shook with detonations.

* * *

The press of enemy troopers closed in around Jax, pushing and shouting as they hurried on toward the Sky Fortress's gate. Bolter rounds smacked down into the horde, pulping torsos and bone, but it did little to discourage the charge. The Chaos soldiers were armed with little more than autoguns and bayonets, and as they hurled themselves forward, some turned their weapons on the Confederate.

Hard rounds bounced from Jax's warplate with little pinging noises, and Jax replied with grand sweeps of his sword, cutting cloth and bone with ease. Gore spattered his chest as he worked the blade back and forth, gutting men and monsters with ease. Despite what Kharn said, the blade was still sharp enough to kill most anything.

At the thought of Kharn, Jax pushed up above the press on a swell of bodies and looked around as he killed. He had lost track of his opponent during the chaos of the charge, and the last thing he wanted was Kharn sneaking up on him like some—

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"

The Betrayer launched himself over the horde right for Jax. The Confederate spun and blocked Gorechild just in time, but Kharn's momentum was too much, and both men fell back into the press, kicking and stabbing.

Jax stabbed Kharn through the shoulder; Kharn ground his axe into Jax's leg; Jax kicked Kharn in the gut; Kharn wrestled Jax to the ground and pulled off a piece of his chest armor; Jax broke Kharn's arm; and Kharn slammed his bare face into Jax's visor.

Armor glass shattered under the blow and the light HUD fizzled out. His senses now open to the outside world, Jax could smell the blood and stink of massed infantry, hear the cacophony of chanting cultists, and see with his own two eyes the undeterminable chaos around him.

Kharn's face loomed above him, pieces of broken glass protruding at jagged angles from his cheekbones and forehead. One of his eyes was pulped and leaking blood down to his chin in fast rivulets where a thick tongue lapped at it. Like a dog panting.

Jax had seen many looks on the faces of many killers. He had seen men obsessed with killing for one reason or another; for religious fervor, political allegiance, or for the plain joy of it. But he had never seen until that moment a face of someone so completely single-minded about killing.

"Get off me!" he roared, striking out with his free fist. Steel knuckles connected with flesh and drove the glass shards deeper into Kharn's face.

They both stumbled to their feet, each bleeding from a dozen or so wounds, and attacked again, sword-to-axe. Between the Battle Saint's accelerated healing ability, and Kharn's blood thirsty determination, each could survive almost anything. The fight quickly devolved into less a struggle of keeping oneself safe, and more a test to see which fighter could wound the other more. It was a battle of attrition between two undeniable heavy weights, where their backswings carved down mortals and missed blows destroyed boulders. They moved across the valley floor in constant attack, hacking and stabbing and kicking and growling. They were completely absorbed by the combat, so much that when the artillery started falling, it went unnoticed.

* * *

The Dogs of War convoy came to a halt half a kilometer from the rearguard of the Chaos siegeworks. Kellan Thade led his men out of the Chimeras and makeshift trucks that had ferried them out to the battlefield, flanked by Trooper Hale and Scholar Martel. Martel had come along at his own behest, insisting that he lead the commissariat cadet troops personally.

"A man's got to live up to the expectations he sets for his men," Martel had said when his decision had been questioned. Thade found he had no reason to argue that.

Presently, the Cadians of 1st Company were spreading out across the front of the Dogs' advance, shifting squad positions to mix with Colonel Hawke's 2nd Company. They mixed quick, differences forgotten in favor of the job at hand. Impalers were held loose, foot movements were light and easy. They weren't wound up—they were, to a man, ready to kill and die for the Emperor.

The effect was evident in the faces of the scholam students spread throughout their lines. Even with no experience, the cadets were keeping their bowels in check simply by being near such hardened veterans. The Cadians joked with them, putting them at ease, while the Armageddon Dogs provided a stoic example. It worked well, and they hadn't even planned it that way.

"We can do this," he muttered, blinking his comm live. "1st and 2nd Companies are in position, General. Ready to advance."

Manker's voice filtered back a second later. "Understood, Colonel Thade. All commanders, sound off readiness."

"Tamdrake with the 75th Armored, ready."

"Colonel Rakatev, the 42nd Marathon Mechanized is ready."

"Colonel Ana Tyryr, 6th Company Acid Dogs, ready."

"Colonel Karl Brusak. The Mordian Marauders stand ready."

"Raider-Colonel Arad, 4th Company Vulture Raiders, ready."

"Colonel Setsui here. The Reapers of Harakoni face the winds of the east. Or is it west?"

No one answered the Harakoni colonel, largely because they had learned to tune out his babbling whenever possible. Evidently, so had Manker.

"Command copies ready signals. Begin operation, proceed with advance."

Thade and his small retinue marched to the front of the assembled Dogs. The Colonel raised his hand in the 'ready advance' signal, and all thousand Cadians under his command snapped into position with a clatter of steel and groan of mechanics.

Scholar Martel whistled, bringing his own boys to attention. He looked at Thade. "What's left of us is under your command, Colonel."

Thade nodded. "Company, advance!"

At the drop of his hand, 2,000 boots began the trek across the desert, weapons at the ready. Seconds later, over 10,000 more, fifty Chimeras, thirty Leman Russ tanks, and a Baneblade followed suit. It was an impressive sight, one that tossed untold amounts of dust into the air and saw the dirt floor churned beneath their movement. The tanks led, followed by the infantry and transports in what would be a sweeping advance to overwhelm the Archenemy's rearguard.

But the tanks wouldn't be the first to make contact. That honor fell to the Dogs' 4th Company and their Vulture hoverbikes.

* * *

Raider-Colonel Mondus Arad knew all the benefits of personal comm. systems provided by the CMC armor platform, and understood perfectly the practical applications of them. In a dust storm, or times when visibility was otherwise obscured, the system would be essential for maintaining unit cohesion. But so long as the skies were clear and visibility perfect, he would rely on hand signals. After all, he told himself, he was Tallarn cavalry first, Dogs of War fast attack second, and that was just how he had been trained.

So it was that the final attack movement was signaled by a chop of the hand, and the Vulture Raiders followed their colonel in on an attack run at the exposed rear of the Archenemy formation.

* * *

The landing pads were one of the first constructs laid down on Marathon by the invading army. They were simple things, just slabs of rockcrete speed-poured into uneven ground cuts, but they did the job well enough. So well, in fact, that as the siege moved further up the pass into the mountains, the landing pads had been left behind. Landers still moved in and out of them on an hourly basis, offloading supplies that were then fed up to the front via long, complicated supply lines.

The pads also held _Cthonic Fire_, a Thunderhawk in the service of the Black Legion, and personal transport of one War Captain Adamus Luchance.

Adamus was just approaching the Thunderhawk when he heard the high-pitched whine of an approaching hover craft. It was odd, unlike any hover vehicle he had heard before, and as it drew nearer, the pitch changed. It became deeper, throatier, and all together more threatening.

Adamus slammed his helmet down and drew Zeruel. He marched back down the _Fire_'s gunramp and onto the landing pad, head looking side to side for the target.

Drake stood on the ramp. "War Captain?"

"Do you hear that?"

Drake listened. "Sounds like land speeders."

Adamus spotted the incoming hoverbikes a second later. "Those are no land speeders. Get down here."

The first prong of vultures hit the landing pads at ridiculous speeds, passing into and out of the defenses and supply racks at rates measured in blinks. They were little more than blurs, their weapons popping the parked landers with ballooning explosions. Smoking steel bounced on rockcrete and ground crews ran in panic, screaming to the Dark Powers for salvation. The vultures ran them down, scything workers on their forked fronts or shredding them with glancing bursts of spikes fired from the saddle. Return fire was sparse and inaccurate—no one in the landing pads had a hope of keeping up with the bikes, or even hurting them if they could.

Adamus didn't care.

The first vulture that came near him would be the last. Zeruel bit into it as it passed, ripping through the steel flank of the bike like it was paper, and detonating the fusion core at the back of the fuselage. The vulture detonated, flipped end for end, and skidded across the rockcrete into a tank of thruster promethium. The explosion doubled, trebled, and washed across the pad.

The rider, his power armor burned and broken, stumbled from the flames. The Dog brought up his rifle, and Adamus shot him through the visor.

Drake watched the body fall and looked to Adamus. "Should we try and kill more?"

The surviving vultures turned and beat their way back across the desert. Their part of the attack was done, Adamus knew. Softening the target was all that was required of them. The heavy lifting would be done by a much larger force.

It was certainly a problem, one that put the integrity of the entire Chaos force at risk, but Adamus didn't care. This was Blackheart's war, not his; he had paid his tribute.

"No," he finally replied. "Our part of this is done. Inform Blackheart of a coming attack, and tell Omnios to issue instructions to the horde for defense of the siegeworks."

Drake followed him into the Thunderhawk. "Yes, War Captain."

Adamus gave orders to the creature in the cockpit and _Cthonic Fire_ lifted off, leaving the devastated landing area behind. The nose swung round and the engines flared, pushing the Astartes gunship toward the mountains and the fight that was raging there.

* * *

An earthshaker round went off next to Jax, digging a twelve-meter gouge out of the valley floor and throwing pulverized rock and human into the air. The shockwave buffeted the Confederate, but he ignored it, and so did Kharn. The Betrayer struck out with a sideswipe against Jax's abdomen and Jax fell, tumbling into the crater end over end until he landed at the steaming center.

It hurt, but he didn't have time to acknowledge it—Kharn was already jumping in after him. Jax stood and brought his Impaler up, discharging a stream of spikes into the charging Betrayer. Kharn shook with the impacts, roaring and thrashing his way through the stream of spikes. Jax's muscles, both synthetic servos and organic tissue, were failing him, and his aim was off because of it. Only half the spikes actually hit Kharn, while the rest simply dug into the dirt.

Kharn knocked the Impaler aside and caught Jax's blade in his hand, literally—the point stabbed through his palm and into his forearm. Jax pushed in, driving the sword out through the elbow, and wrenched it around and out. Kharn's entire arm from the elbow to the hand split apart with a wet splash of meat and tendons falling out.

The Betrayer didn't stop, didn't even seem to notice it, and came on, wailing on Jax's neck armor with his whirring axe. The adamantine teeth ground through the thin plating and into the Confederate's shoulder, cutting the bundle of musculature there and snubbing any movement out of that arm. That caused quite a problem, considering that was his sword arm and now he had nothing to fight back with.

Jax pulled away and bounded back up the crater slope, blocking what he could with his free hand and taking the rest as weaker, indirect hits.

When he had a second, he swapped hands on his sword and went on the offensive. Another shell went off nearby, and a ragged torso splashed across Jax's chest. He ignored it, pressing into his attack against Kharn, stabbing the Betrayer in the throat, the stomach, the shoulder.

Kharn went to block one of the thrusts, but Jax maneuvered around that, and with a final growl cut the Betrayer's hand from his wrist. Gorechild landed in the bloodied slush, its blade kicking up mud.

"KILL YOU!" Kharn roared.

"Shut up."

The shining blade cut the air, bit into the Betrayer's neck, and sent his detached head spinning to a stop in the muck. Kharn's body smashed to the ground, leaking blood from neck. His Astartes physiology, even with the corruptive gifts bestowed upon it by his dark patron, could do nothing to save him from complete decapitation.

In victory, Jax first felt the wearying effects of his excessive blood loss. The cuts across his body burned and numbed simultaneously, and he lost his balance at once, collapsing across the dead body of his opponent.

The fanatics still alive retreated through the artillery fire, yelping like whipped dogs in the face of their champion's death. Most of them died from bolter fire or artillery shells, while the rest would be slaughtered upon their return to the Archenemy camp as punishment.

Jax held on to consciousness by looking around, trying to put names to things. Crater, body, body, body, crater, boulder, body, body, body, Kharn's head.

The Confederate stopped at that last one, his gaze lingering on the Betrayer's face, the lips split into an insane grin. Even in death, the madman still thirsted for blood.

"Good fight," Jax told him. Kharn never replied.

* * *

The Land Raider came to a halt in the body field and cranked its maw open on grinding gears, airing the interior to the blood-soaked smoke-fest of the outside world. The artillery had ceased its bombardment a minute before, and in that moment the Land Raider had crunched out of the Sky Fortress with the rescue party. Captain Pontius was dead—that much had been confirmed—but neither the Astartes nor the Dogs present were about to give up on their Battle Saint.

Dimitri ran out of the Land Raider first, thundering into the bodies and craters like a man possessed, head jerking from right to left, right to left, scanning. He had to find Jax. Jax wouldn't have left him in the field for dead, and neither would he. The final fight was upon them. They needed their Battle Saint, and Dimitri needed his friend.

When he spotted the white-clad arm spattered with blood waving to him, Dimitri ran to it and dropped to his knees. "Jax!"

"Hey, Dimitri." Jax grinned and gestured to the severed head next to him. "Took care of Kharn for ya. Unless he can grow his head back. He can't grow his head back, can he?"

"No, Jax." Dimitri knew the signs of blood loss when he saw them. Jax's thoughts and speech were even more off-beat than normal. He needed to be healed immediately, the irony being that Jax himself was the only one capable of doing the healing. "Can you move?"

"If you pull me."

Dimitri sighed. "Fantastic. Menshaw! Sternev! Roverson! Someone get over here!"

The ratlings moved up at once, forced to scramble over the uneven ground like animals. Roverson beat them there, but Dimitri wasn't sure how. One moment he wasn't there, and the next he was, appearing from the mist steaming from a crater.

It was unnerving, but not altogether off-putting. "Help me move him," Dimitri told him, grabbing Jax by the shoulders. "I can't lift him by myself."

Roverson said nothing but got to it. In a moment, they had Jax sitting up against the side of the Land Raider, grinning like an idiot.

"Hey, Menshaw," he said, rubbing the diminutive bodyguard's scruff of hair. "Yer a good little guy."

Menshaw knocked Jax's hand away. "Can't we just gakking recharge him or something? Y'know, get him healed?"

"Yes," Dimitri said. "We need something for him to absorb, a battery of some kind. He should be able to convert and store the energy. Do we have anything on hand?"

Roverson grabbed one of the Raider's lascannon mounts and tore the power pack from its housing. He handed it to Dimitri.

"Well, all right." Dimitri kneeled down and pushed the pack into Jax's grip. "Can you use this?"

Jax looked at it for a moment, then crushed it in his hand and absorbed the explosion. A wave of white shimmered across his body, and through the rents and tears in his armor, Dimitri could see Jax's muscle and flesh knitting back together, staunching the blood flow.

"It worked," he breathed.

"A neat trick," said a new voice. "I suppose you are a saint after all."

Jax looked around. "Who said that?"

"I did," answered the Son of Marathon standing at the front of the Land Raider.

The Astartes walked without a helm, and his bare head was traced by scars from countless battles. His markings made him a veteran sergeant, and his service studs noted a full two centuries of battle. Dimitri knew him, and by the look on the Confederate's face, so did Jax.

"Dirich," Jax said, getting to his feet. His sureness of step had returned—the power pack had done its job. "I remember you."

"Oh, joy," said Dirich, but his expression indicated he felt anything but, "the Battle Saint remembers such a lowly servant as I. Truly, I am shined on by the God-Emperor."

"I'll show you something to shine on," Jax growled, taking a step forward.

Dimitri put a hand on his chest. "Not here, Jax. Not now."

Dirich grinned, but said no more goading words. "I know better than to fight you, Confederate. We are both Imperials, truly, and your might is something I would do well to avoid challenging. Besides, I have higher duties to attend to."

Another Son of Marathon jogged up and handed Dirich a power sword—the blade Captain Pontius had fallen using. Dimitri understood at once; with Pontius dead, his second-in-command, Dirich, assumed the role of acting captain of the Third Company.

"I have a company to lead and a fortress to defend," Dirich went on. "Besides, with your Legion engaging the Archenemy below, I can hardly ignore your presence in this war. In short, I am honored by your help."

Dirich sheathed his power sword and held out his hand. After a moment, Jax shook with him.

"We're here for you," Jax said, "but we're here for the planet. Because today, we're all Sons of Marathon."

The Astartes in attendance shouted their agreement, the sounds coming out of their helms as harsh barks.

Menshaw stopped chewing his cigar in surprise. "Huh. He came up with that himself."

"I know," Dimitri said. "I'm surprised myself."

Dirich's face seemed dangerously close to approaching a grin, and probably would have said something meaningful back if the calm hadn't been shattered by the roar of an approaching gunship and the rapid thuk-thuk-thuk of heavy bolter fire.

"Incoming!" he roared, knocking Jax out of the way.

The Dogs and Astartes scattered, taking cover behind the Land Raider and down amongst the bodies as bolts raked their position. Rounds exploded amid the bodies and against the Land Raider's hull, pitting and denting the steel. The Astartes atop the machine was shredded, his armor torn open and gutted in the hail of bolts.

Dimitri turned in the muck as the Thunderhawk tore overhead, engines howling like the beating of a war drum. He tracked the gunship and returned fire, but the spikes did little to the craft.

What did have an effect was Jax.

"Everyone down!" the Confederate yelled, rolling out of cover with his hand up and open.

For an instant, a beam of dazzling energy linked Jax and the Thunderhawk, and then the craft's starboard engine detonated in a wave of blue heat. The gunship listed, burning fuel igniting its frame, and smashed nose-first into the front wall of the Sky Fortress.

Everyone got to their feet. The Astartes started a damage assessment and got the Land Raider started, while Dimitri walked to Jax's side.

"Good shot," he muttered.

Jax shrugged. "It's what I do. Wanna go see who it was had the balls enough to strafe the baddest mother fuckers in the galaxy?"

Dimitri nodded, and they started out toward the wrecked Thunderhawk. They were halfway there when a figure pulled its way out of the twisted steel and burning hull, and almost upon it by the time they noticed that the figure wasn't wounded, but a fully intact and very dangerous Chaos Astartes.

"He's Black Legion," Dimitri said.

"Yeah," Jax said, drawing his Impaler, "I'm about to make him dead legion."

The Black Legionnaire had different ideas, apparently, and shot Jax's Impaler out of his hand. Another bolt smacked into Dimitri's chest, blasting away neo-steel plates. The Equerry landed on his back, gasping for air, the hole in his chest steaming.

"Dimitri!"

The Black Legionnaire climbed from the crater the Thunderhawk had dug during its crash. Astartes positioned along the walltop, the few that were left uninjured after the impact, fired down at him. He returned fire, sweeping a few from the battlements with precise headshots and sticking the rest into cover.

Then he turned to Jax. He was bleeding from a cut across his forehead, and despite having never seen his face before, Jax knew who it was.

"Hello, Confederate," said Adamus Luchance. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you again."

**Author's Note: I'm posting this from a hotel room in Florida. I mention this simply because this vacation is going to mean good things for this story, _Iron Knight_, and hopefully _Green is Best_. I'm trying to get a good lead on these stories so I can concentrate on some original work I'll be hammering out this summer. Any way, the Florida air is warm and clear, and I'm operating at full capacity.**

**The arc is finally coming to a close next chapter in a big way that should spell out some changes for our characters, both heroes and villains. The way the pacing works out, it should tonally feel like the conclusion to the first half of the story, but all that's all discussion for another time.**

**Right now, I'm content to thank you for reading, and bid you adieu until next Saturday.**


	54. Chapter 54: Sons: Marathon's End

The vultures of 4th Company cut through the front of the advancing Dogs, skimming over heads and past treads. Their first attack run had been successful, harrying the Archenemy forces and decimating the oppositions air power while it was still on the ground. Now, they needed a moment to regroup before heading back into the fray.

The vultures banked hard at the rear of the Imperial formation, each bike taking three hundred feet to perform a sweeping turn. Thrusters wailed, grav-sponsons thrummed, and the noses of five hundred hoverbikes came up in line for another attack.

Major Sergeant Avi turned as elegantly as he could, slamming the airbrakes and catching a good headwind to pick up his nose and bring it around. Alongside him, the other nine bikes in his prong did the same, their riders pushed back under the gee forces. When they came out of the turn, Avi made a quick hand-chop and accelerated, darting back out over the advancing column, his men behind him. Across the advance, the other prongs did the same, and the full might of 4th Company launched itself back into the fight.

The comm. beeped in Avi's ear, and Colonel Arad spoke. "The rest of the Legion is engaging on foot, and the armor battle is kicking up. This action's too heavy for us. Concentrate on isolated transports and groups of enemies. Prong leaders, choose your objectives and keep them tagged. We don't need any run-ins today. Understood?"

Fifty prong leaders, Avi included, shouted their ascent. They knew their duty, knew how to keep loose and skim the crowds like sharks. Years of cavalry work had turned maneuvers to ingrained reflexes, and weeks of training had made these vultures extensions of their bodies. 4th Company was ready.

"Raiders," Arad yelled, "advance!"

Avi unhinged his Impaler and brought his concussion grenade launcher around into line with the advancing Archenemy forces. Seconds later, he was in them, cutting heads with the splayed front of his hoverbike.

The battle had joined.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 54: Sons of Marathon: Part 3: Marathon's End_

Even as the full weight of the Dogs' formation hit the reeling southward end of the Archenemy base, and the ground shook beneath the exchanges of fire between titanic infantrymen and the booms of tank fire and the weight of history in the making, the fighting in the mountains was still as desperate as it had been for the past weeks. Perhaps even more so, considering that now it wasn't just the Sons of Marathon Astartes facing death, but the Battle Saint himself.

Having just narrowly come out on top in a fight with Kharn the Betrayer, Jax had used almost all his reserves to heal his own damaged body, a task that had left him physically and mentally drained. Add to that the exhaustion of three days of straight fighting, and the stress of seeing his best friend shot in the chest in front of him, and it wouldn't be hard for one to understand why the Confederate wasn't prepared for the fight he now found himself in.

He blocked slowly, his movements sluggish with fatigue, and his blade sparked against his opponent's. Blades locked and his attacker pushed, sending Jax back in a stumble. He tried to recover, but his body and suit were slow to follow his instruction. The synapse links along his spine didn't fire fast enough, fried after days and months and years of nonstop usage. Betrayed by his equipment and his own body, Jax left himself wide open.

The point of the sword slipped between his stomach plates and plunged deep into his guts.

Jax howled, but Adamus didn't grin.

Adamus Luchance, War Captain and Black Legionnaire, didn't know and didn't care that Jax was at the end of his rope, that days of exhaustion were finally taking their toll on his adversary, and that Adamus was having an easy time of it because of that. All Adamus knew was that the man who had so thoroughly challenged him when last they met was now so far from what he had been. There was no swift, deadly predator to be found here, only a weak mortal in a clunky, unwieldy suit.

His anger boiling over, Adamus smacked Jax across the face, knocking him off the sword with a slick splat of splitting organs and onto the dirt. "What is this?" he roared. "You are the Battle Saint, you pathetic shit! Stand up and fight like you did the first time! Where is the beast within you?"

"Right here," Jax growled. He rolled to the right, snatched up Dimitri's fallen rifle, and spun up into a crouch, holding the Impaler one-handed, ready to pummel Adamus under a stream of hypersonic spikes.

But Adamus was gone, having already moved into place next to Jax. The daemon sword came down and the Impaler split in half at the barrel. His knee came up and caught Jax in the face, knocking him back, adamantium sword coming up to block.

"You are slow!"

Adamus grabbed Jax's sword wrist and broke it with an electronic snap of articulators. The gleaming sword fell to the ground.

"You are weak!"

Adamus kicked him in the chest, knocking him off balance and sending him into the dirt on his stomach.

"You are not worthy of your title, even under such a weak regime as the Imperium!" Adamus screamed. He stepped back for a moment, composing himself and working to control his heart rate. "I have no time for this." Calmly, he stepped forward and drew his bolter, pressing its headed muzzle to the back of Jax's head. "What do you call that Legion of yours? The Dogs of War? Apt, then, that I put you down like one."

Bolts and spikes smacked into the ground nearby, digging up gouges and sprays of dirt. Adamus whipped his head around in time to see a Sons of Marathon Land Raider thundering toward him over the bodies and rocks of the pass, and the figures perched atop it. His head movement, swiveling his visor into line with the tank, was all the signal Rover Roverson needed.

The spike caught Adamus in the face, and he fell to the ground.

Sergeant Darv Fallar was on his feet the second the Land Raider came to a stop. "Get him! Get to the Battle Saint!" His voice cracked, and tears were running down his face. None of the others judged him for it.

As the Dogs and their Astartes allies moved to help the fallen Confederate, Adamus shook off the pain in his forehead. Personal shielding was expensive beyond belief, but well worth it for protection against snipers; his helm was dented, but nothing else had been harmed.

"Sandalphon."

_Lord?_ replied the daemonic strike cruiser, its voice filling his head.

"Send down Tharok at my coordinates," Adamus said, sitting up, still shaking his head. "It turns out these Dogs of War are more tenacious than I thought."

Through their bond, Adamus could feel a thin layer of amusement slip over Sandalphon's ever present rage. _At once, lord._

Twenty seconds later, just as Jax was being lifted by two Sons of Marathon, a red flash lit up the field, expanded, and winked out, leaving behind the hulking form of a Chaos obliterator. It turned to face them, racks of weaponry pushing themselves out of bloody tears in the flesh of its arms.

Everyone looked at it, but it was Fallar who put their thoughts into words.

"Oh shit," he whispered.

The opening salvo scythed down the two Sons holding Jax in bursts of crimson blood and golden armor, and sent the rest of the rescue party scurrying into whatever cover was left in the body-choked pass.

As Tharok pushed them back, Adamus stood up and walked over to Jax. He had dropped his bolter during the commotion, and so was left with just his sword, but that didn't matter.

"Now then, where were we?" he asked his beaten victim.

"The part where I kick the shit out of you," Jax roared, flinging himself into the Chaos champion in a thunderous tackle.

The Battle Below

The Dogs of War and their allies pushed into the Chaos siegeworks hard and fast, driving deep into the trenches and prefabricated buildings. Resistance was light, with few real troopers and a lot of frightened slaves and their drivers. But whips and shovels didn't do much against CMC armor, and the Dogs found themselves at the very heart of the siegeworks before the Archenemy's real forces turned from their assault on the Sky Fortress and faced the Legion.

Now, as the advance fragmented—by design, as the strengths of CMC armor could better be served if the enemy had no central target to focus on—and started laying into the buildings and supplies around them, Colonel Thade found himself fighting alongside two of his fellow officers: Marathon-born Ivan Rakatev, and Scholar Martel.

Rakatev had no CMC armor and no depth perception thanks to a missing eye, but he held his own just the same, firing with a bolt pistol and hacking anything that came close with a well-worn chainsword. His vox-man stuck close to him, relaying Rakatev's placement orders, and as Thade soon realized, it was the troops of the 42nd Marathon Mechanized that surrounded him now, lasguns hosing down the Chaos-addled troops that charged them.

Martel, however, did have CMC armor, and used it just as a cranky commissar-turned-schoolteacher should: with a big hammer and lots of florid cursing. Standing to Thade's right, Martel kept himself busy with pulverizing fanatics one hammer-strike at a time, making up a new euphemism for each one slain.

Thade spotted Chaos Marines moving through the trenches toward them, and had just begun to shout their position when Martel bounded off in that direction, hammer held high, screaming at the top of his lungs. Cursing, Thade ran after him.

* * *

Four hundred meters to the east, Colonel Bloody Hawke was busy living up to his nickname. A formation of cultists had swung in from the flank, and though 4th Company's vultures had done their best to carve swathes of dead from their ranks, they still managed to push into the fight. The vultures couldn't follow them in without risking friendly fire, and so Hawke's 2nd Company had taken up the job of stopping them.

They did so, and did it fast and up-close. Each member of 2nd Company was a veteran of the Armageddon Steel Legion, and ever one of them carried a standard-issue Armageddon chainsword. It was those chainswords that now cut into the cultists, their adamantine teeth chewing bone and tearing muscle. Smoke plumed from 2nd Company's position, mixed with the agonized screams of the dying.

Hawke heard them, but didn't care. Pulling the spinning blades of his weapon from a man's gut, he took a moment to find his footing and charged in again, boots sloshing through the mud and blood.

* * *

_Unstoppable Advance_'s engine, having groaned and growled for the past week and a half of hiding and fleeing from fights, sang a throaty tune as it powered across the trenches. The Baneblade's machine spirit was in fine spirits, and its joy seemed to infect its kin tanks in the Marathon 75th Armored Division. Across the siegeworks, the crack of armored cannons could be heard, mixing with the explosions of impact.

Such a cramped advance was hell on tanks, the close-in melee at odds with all conventional armored strategy, and without infantry support, they would be exposed and cut apart by even the most incompetent infantry.

Thankfully, they had infantry support. More to the point, they had the support of the Blackened Guard, General Manker's elite Dogs of War special company, riding atop each of their tanks, and with their help, Tamdrake was systematically cutting the Chaos resistance to pieces.

The Baneblade lurched forward, breaking a rockcrete bunker under its weight, and crawled into the next section of the siegeworks, revealing to Tamdrake the largest target of all.

"Whiskel!" he shouted, cupping one hand over his vox-horn. "Whiskel, move us to the north! I want to take a shot at that big bastard!"

"Right away, sir," shouted the loopy driver.

"Methal! Methal, load up a high-ex deep-pen round!" Tamdrake shouted.

"Yes sir, Colonel!"

Manker, who had elected to protect the command tank personally, looked back at him. "What are you planning?"

"I watched these bastards land a week ago, and waited as they killed my planet, General." Tamdrake pointed. "And now, I'm going to kill them back."

Manker looked. The Chaos siege engine loomed ahead of them, its four legs grinding it slowly across the battlefield. Weapon blisters across its corrugated surface stitched lines of tracer fire and las-blasts through the air, chasing the vulture hoverbikes that zipped past its surface.

Slowly, Manker nodded and accessed his comm. system. "The 75th Armored is moving into position around the siege engine. All free units, cover the tanks."

* * *

Delgado Mettarion was a Warsmith of the Iron Warriors, and had been for nearly nine thousand years. Before that he had served during the Heresy as a simple Captain, and had been present in every major engagement from the Drop Site Massacre to the endgame on Terra. Mettarion was the Chosen of Perturbo, his Primarch's most trusted son, a position that had seen him resurrected time and again.

All this meant two things: Mettarion knew sieges better than anyone else on Marathon at that moment, and he knew from experience what losing a siege looked like. Presently, looking down from his position on the siege crawler's command deck into the churning war below, Mettarion knew that defeat was upon them.

Huron Blackheart did not know that, and if he had been told, he would have refused to believe it. Instead, he seemed content to sit on his throne at the heart of the command deck and bark orders through his tortured, wounded throat.

"Mettarion! Why have you not used this machine to level them?"

Calmly, the Warsmith turned to face the Tyrant of Badab. "The siege crawler is a mobile base, lord, not some titan. If you will recall, we lost our only titan when you decided it would be best used keeping watch in the Acropolis."

Blackheart stood up and began marching forward, intent upon ripping Mettarion apart for such an insult, but never got there. There was an explosion, followed by the rending, tearing sound of something heavy and metallic being ripped free of its mount, and the whole siege engine listed to one side.

Blackheart tumbled, and Mettarion grabbed the railing to keep upright. Looking down the crawler's side, he could see the front right leg as it broke apart at the knee joint. On the fortified plains below, tank fire kicked up in pitch, hammering the siege engine's flank with a score of detonations. They weren't much, but they were just enough to push the crawler's center of balance out of place.

With the slow grace of a dying behemoth, the siege engine fell.

* * *

Even though her company was right under it, and even though the explosions rending its body deafened her, Ana Tyryr didn't notice the siege crawler's death until the last minute—she was too busy stabbing a Chaos Marine in its face to care. The bastard had killed four of her Acid Dogs, and she would die before she let him get away. Her combi-switch trailed blood as she hacked into him, stabbing him in the visor, the breathe grille, the neck seal, and anywhere else that was close to vital and not completely locked down.

He fought her at first, but then gave up when his twin hearts shut down, and still she kept stabbing. She stabbed until the world filled with smoke and the sun was blotted out by something huge falling above her and until Cald Roep grabbed her armored shoulders and shook her out of it.

"Are you stupid! Come on!" he shouted.

Tyryr looked up, saw the groaning, spiked form of the siege crawler looming down on them. "Oh shit," she muttered.

Standing, she ran with the cadet out of the fall radius, shouting to her company to follow. Most of them got out in time, and turned to watch the crawler slam into the plains.

* * *

Across the battlefield, Tamdrake pounded the rim of his turret in elation until his fists hurt, and then started punching the air and screaming. He couldn't contain himself, and over the vox, he could hear the rest of his tank commanders were experiencing a similar trouble. The condition spread, and a cheer went up amongst the entire Imperial coalition, from Dog and Marathoner alike, though the latter were considerably louder.

At the front of the Baneblade, General Manker activated his comm. "3rd Company, secure the wreckage. Kill anything that moves."

"Copy that, Com1," said Colonel Setsui, his permanent grin audible. "The Reapers of Harakon stand united!"

* * *

Mettarion crawled to his feet. The command deck was beside him, what had been a level surface now extending vertically away from him. The lower gunnery decks had been pushed through to this level during the fall, and several slaves lay around him, impaled and gored by the flying debris. Some Astartes, too, had suffered this fate.

Huron Blackheart was one of them.

A piece of steel had made its way through the Blood Reaver's chest, letting out a flow of blood that had pooled around his fallen body. Mettarion walked over to him, stumbling from a broken leg, and knelt down.

"I've lost," whispered Blackheart.

"Yes," Mettarion replied simply, checking his storm bolter. Full clip. Good.

Blackheart went on. "All I ever wanted was to kill Marathon…"

Mettarion didn't say anything to that, and stood to leave. Blackheart called after him.

"Stay here, Mettarion! Call for retrieval!"

"No."

"You must! Otherwise, you will die!"

Mettarion looked back at him. "We will both die, Blackheart. The difference is that I will live again. I have a primarch that values me. I do not expect you to understand."

With that, Mettarion ducked out of the wreckage and faced the Dogs of War as they came at him. He got off twelve shots before a spike punched through his skull and plunged him into a familiar blackness.

The Fight Above

Jax laid into Adamus with everything he had, denting ceramite and breaking electro-fibre bundles with every hit. With a fist to the jaw, a knee to the groin, a foot to the shin, an elbow across the faceplate, the Confederate knocked the War Captain back one hit at a time, and for a moment, he seemed to be wining.

And then Adamus laughed.

"Is that it? Really?" he asked, and smashed Jax in the skull with the pommel of his blade. Pushing the Confederate off of him, he got to his feet, blade in hand. Failure sigils winked across his cracked visor, obscuring his vision. He yanked his helmet off, tossed it to the ground.

"Is that really all you can do?" He stabbed Jax in the gut and knocked him into the dirt. Jax kicked out for his face, but Adamus dodged it easily, like sidestepping a drunkard. "Are you not a saint? I have fought Guard captains more worthy than this!"

Stepping up over Jax's head, he brought his sword up into position for a downward kill-stroke into the Confederate's throat. With just enough thrust, it would sever the head cleanly, and end the Imperial's pathetic life.

And then he heard something coming over the mountains, a low roar of voices raised in a cheer. He stopped what he was doing and stood up, looking down the pass and between the peaks to the siegeworks below. A pall of smoke was rising into the evening sky, and Adamus couldn't see the siege crawler. The cheering went on.

"Hear that?" Jax asked, blood flecking his lips. "That's our 'weak regime' kicking yer ass, you stupid bastard."

Adamus was speechless for a moment, and then grinned, lips peeling back from too-white teeth. "Fair point, Confederate." He looked away, his body shifting as if he were speaking to someone else. When he finally turned back, his grin had grown. "It appears that your salvation has arrived. An Imperial fleet just translated in-system, hundreds of ships strong, a veritable crusade."

He stepped away from Jax, sheathed his blade, and picked up his helmet. He brushed the dirt from it as he spoke. "In any case, we have lost this fight. I know that. I am also not a bitter loser—you won, I lost, and so I will not kill you. I doubt you would extend the same courtesy to me."

"Damn fucking right I wouldn't."

"Of course not. But no matter. I must leave now, Confederate. I am glad we had this time to fight, but rest assured, next time we meet I will kill you without compunction."

There was a build-up of ozone, a crackle of dissipating particles, and then a crack of red. When Jax's vision cleared, Adamus was gone.

* * *

Adamus, Tharok, Drake, and Omnios arrived on the teleportation deck together, trawled up from the surface at exactly the same time from completely different places. Three of them were standing. Drake was laying on the floor, a piece of shrapnel from the crashing Thunderhawk jammed through his chest.

Instantly, Adamus whirled on Drake. "Why do you always die at the worst times?" he roared. "Why can't you ever survive the crashing gunship, or walk away from the ork's flamethrower? Why do you always have to leave me fighting the biggest problem alone?"

Drake didn't respond, on account of how very dead he was. Adamus kicked him in the ribs and stormed away. "Omnios, get him back up."

The sorcerer made a hollow wailing noise, and Adamus shot him a glare from the doorway. "Do not _even_ complain to me, lest I find a reason to direct my anger in your direction."

Omnios glared at Adamus through his vacant helm, but said nothing more. Satisfied, Adamus turned back into the hall. "Tharok, come," he barked, and walked out of sight.

With a shrug to the sorcerer, Tharok followed his master out of the teleportarium and down the hall toward the bridge. He entered just as Adamus was overseeing the last preparations for a warp jump. On the main occulus, Tharok could see the flicker-flash of ship-to-ship weapons as the Imperial fleet began their systematic destruction of the Chaos ships.

"Blackheart must be dead," Adamus said. "Mettarion, too. Otherwise, our defense would be better than this."

Tharok didn't know what to say to that, so he settled for a nod. The autoloader along his spine cycled with a loud ca-chunk.

Adamus shook his head. "There is no reason to stay here. Take us out, Sandalphon."

_Yes, lord._

Adamus turned and marched over to his throne, causing Tharok to stumble out of his way. The War Captain sat down heavily and watched the warp jump as it unfurled on the main screen.

"Damn the Battle Saint," he muttered, turning his helm in his gauntleted hands. "He killed Kharn, and now Blackheart is dead, too." His frown deepened. "Maybe I was wrong to leave him alive."

After a moment, he seemed to give up on the thought and tossed his helmet to the prostrate slave chained to the floor next to him. "Work to repair that," he growled, standing again. "I have some planning to do."

Unnoticed by anyone on the bridge, Amaranth Vilverin smiled to herself. The Imperium had won after all, and the planet of her birth was safe, made that way by the Battle Saint, and in turn, Dimitri. Just knowing that much could keep her going.

Silently, she set to work on repairing the oversized helmet in her hands. Around her, the strike cruiser slipped out of reality and into the immaterium.

* * *

"This is _Castellan's Flame_, flagship of the Perseus Crusade. Any surviving Imperial ground forces, please respond."

Manker looked into the sky, ignoring the dwindling firefights all around him, and saw the far-off detonations of enemy warships. He blinked open his comm. line.

"This is General Harken Manker of the Dogs of War Legion, Imperial Guard. Archenemy ground forces are pacified, over."

There was a pause on the other end, then, "Are you for real?"

"Very much so."

The voice changed to a deeper, more masculine voice. "This is Warmaster Slavere, commander of the Perseus Crusade. Well met, General. Do you require extraction?"

"Whenever possible, Warmaster."

* * *

The obliterator disappeared in a teleportation haze, and the rescue team didn't wait another second before charging out to Jax's side. The Confederate was just getting to his feet, and waved them off as the approached.

"Get Dimitri," he said. "Dimitri needs more help than I do."

Of course, no one followed that directive, as all of them were more concerned with Jax than the equerry, but after a minute, Rover Roverson followed the order and got to Dimitri's side.

The equerry's chest armor had been destroyed completely by the bolter shell, and fragments of armor were imbedded in his chest, but he was alive thanks to his suit's coagulants and healthy dose of dumb luck.

Roverson opened a channel. "I'm with Equerry Vlasna. He's alive, but needs medical attention."

Before someone could respond, Dimitri's armored fingers tapped Roverson on the chest. His lips moved, but Roverson couldn't hear him. He leaned in.

"Repeat that."

Dimitri's voice was weak. "Did we win?" he asked. "Is the planet—"

"We won. Everything's safe," Roverson replied.

"Good," Dimitri smiled, and then passed out.

Roverson picked him up and headed for the nearby Land Raider, stepping over the bodies that laid like a carpet on the valley floor. Beyond, on the plains below the mountains, the receding sun was refracting through the smoke of battle and casting a haze over the victorious masses.

**Author's Note: I feel like Marathon has been falling for a year now, and now it's finally done. Hope you all liked the conclusion.**

**Next chapter, the Legion will lick its wounds and do a little reorganization, and then move on to bigger and more varied plots in the future, starting with a visit from another dimension. You know that whole 'more StarCraft' thing that everyone's been wanting? Yeah, that's coming down the pipe directly.**

**Tell me what you thought, think, pondered, agreed with, disagreed with, and found funny, and I'll see you again next weekend.**


	55. Chapter 55: Kickoff

Marathon had fallen, but not without a fight. The Central Acropolis smoked in the weeks after the war, its streets turned to rubble, its spires twisted to fire-blacked skeletons. The Sky Fortress of the Sons of Marathon was strewn with bodies, its front gate jammed by the ashes of burned heretics filling the mountain pass. The plains of the main continent burned with the wreckage of armies, both Chaos and Imperial, and from orbit, the scars of bombardment and atomics could be seen across the planet's face.

Yes, Marathon had fallen, but the war went on, in the mountains and towns, in the lowlands and swamps, and in all the places the surviving forces of the Archenemy had gone to ground. In orbit, the battlefleet of the Perseus Crusade drifted through the void, navigating around the broken hulks of destroyed enemy vessels. Boarding teams secured the corrupt wrecks, engaging scattered space teams and worse horrors still lurking in the derelict ships.

But all of this was just clean-up. For the men and women of the Dogs of War, the fight was over, and new wars were on the horizon.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 55: Kickoff_

Dimitri woke up, sat up, and immediately regretted both actions. His head throbbed, his shoulders ached, stars filled his sight and his chest felt like it was on fire. For a moment, he was convinced his ribcage was caved in, and he laid back down not five seconds after sitting up.

He looked at the blank ceiling. "I'm alive," he muttered.

Next to him, the medicae servitor made an oily gurgle-belch. Dimitri sighed.

"Can you find an orderly?" he asked.

The servitor stared at him, then slowly turned and walked out of the room. Five minutes later, it returned with an older man in a white robe with a red twist hanging from his neck.

"Hello, Equerry Vlasna. I'm Chief Medicae Oronfell."

"Where am I?"

Oronfell walked to the cogitator next to Dimitri's sick bed and started leafing through the spool basket. "_Castellan's Flame_, in orbit," he said distractedly. "You're recovering nicely. Hard to imagine we had to replace most of your ribs."

"What!"

"You took a bolter shell to the chest, son. We had to do something."

Dimitri felt his chest. His flesh was wracked by a nasty scar between his pectorals, and when he tapped on his ribcage, he could feel the resistance of hardened steel. He stared at the doctor. "How long before I can move?"

Oronfell raised an eyebrow. "Not for some time, I'm afraid. Not without some kind of exo-prosthetic."

Dimitri thought about that. "How about power armor?"

Six minutes later, the door to the medicae suite clanged open and Dimitri stepped out, clad in his suit of red CMC armor. The two Dogs stationed as sentries looked at him. Dimitri recognized the smaller of the two.

"Trooper Hale."

"Equerry." Hale's helmet was off, clamped to his leg. A toothpick was hanging from his mouth. "Need something?"

"Just direction, trooper. Where is the Battle Saint?"

Hale looked at his fellow guard, exchanged a few words, then back to Dimitri. "Come on, Equerry. I'll take you to him."

(' ')

The _Castellan's Flame _was an Emperor class battleship, one of the largest vessels ever to serve in an Imperial fleet. It was home to the command echelons of the Perseus Crusade, the largest pan-galactic Imperial Guard assemblage ever commissioned. Moreover, the Crusade represented Cadia's initiative to take its rightful place at the forefront of Imperial military endeavors.

The Dogs of War were given accommodations in the command deck superstructure at the rear of the ship. Companies were spread across six-man flats, with the commanders given their own suites. The Battle Saint's quarters were at the top of the structure, in the same hall as the Warmaster's chambers, prompting a surprise run-in that Dimitri wasn't at all expecting.

Warmaster Slavere was leaving his chambers just as Dimitri and Hale arrived. Against his will, Dimitri found himself making eye contact with the Cadian.

"Shit," he muttered, realizing what was coming next.

"Equerry Vlasna," Slavere greeted, coming to a stop in front of Dimitri. "Good to see you're finally awake."

Dimitri had met Slavere once before, almost a year and a half before on Terra, back when he and Jax had rescued Marie Xanthius, the daughter of the then-Master of the Administratum. He had struck Dimitri then as an aristocratic ass licker, and judging by the amount of scribes and advisors he surrounded himself with, jotting down his every word, Slavere hadn't changed much.

"Warmaster." Dimitri nodded respectfully. "The Dogs of War thank you for taking us in."

Slavere smiled a carefully practiced smile. "I really had no choice in the matter, I'm afraid. My wife simply wouldn't accept your death."

"Wife?" Even as the word left his mouth, Dimitri knew what that meant. Last he checked, Slavere was courting Marie Xanthius. They must have married.

"I think you know her," Slavere grinned. "Madam Xanthius is well heard of in the spires of Terra."

Dimitri nodded. "Congratulations. She's a lovely woman."

"The compliment is much appreciated, Equerry. I wonder if you might consider joining us for some evening entertainment?" Slavere leaned in, as if this next part were some kind of letting-in of Dimitri into the Slavere family's private affairs. "Although, between the two of us, I don't quite share her fondness for the theatre. It would be good to have a fellow amongst the guests to make the event bearable."

Dimitri wanted to ask, 'Since when were we such good chums?' but he swallowed his words and laughed instead. "I can imagine. Count me in."

He and Slavere said their goodbyes and the Warmaster continued on down the hall, the boots of his retinue clacking on the polished tile. When he was gone, Hale made a sour face and muttered something about brutish fornication and a particular species of water fowl.

Dimitri sighed and pushed open the door to Jax's chambers. A bottle of wine flew out and broke against his armor, spattering his face and electing cackles from the pair of drunk ratlings in the parlor area.

"Eh, go 'way, gak-face." Menshaw's words were slurred. "We don' want yer stupid face 'round here."

"Hello, Mr. Vlasna!" chirped Sternev. "Sorry about the wine, sir. The Sarge is reeeeally smashed."

"Hale, take some time off," Dimitri said, wiping the broken glass off his shoulder guard.

Hale nodded and walked away grumbling. Dimitri shut the door behind him and stepped into the parlor. It was a fine suite, easily matching the accommodations of the Dogs' spire on Terra. Comfortable living. A chandelier hovered near the ceiling.

"Where is he?" Dimitri asked.

"Eh, what'da you care?" Menshaw asked.

"Sternev, where is he?"

The younger ratling pointed back into an antechamber. "Back there, sir."

Dimitri walked that way, stepping over a pile of vomit. "Thank you, Sternev. Get Menshaw under control, will you?"

"Yes sir."

Jax caught him in a bear hug the second he walked into the antechamber. "Dimitri!"

"Hey, Jax."

Jax set him down, and Dimitri felt several of his vertebrae popping back into place. "Here he is, everybody. Let's get a round of applause, huh?"

There was scattered clapping from the few men standing around the table. Dimitri recognized each of them: Colonel Rakatev, Colonel Tamdrake, and Veteran Sergeant Dirich of the Sons of Marathon. Corporal Lang was there, standing far enough behind Rakatev to keep out of the conversation. Tamdrake and Dirich had their own aides, too. The Marathon men wore matte green CMC armor, so new that Dimitri could smell the fresh paint.

Dimitri thanked them for the welcome and looked at Jax. "What's going on here?"

"War council."

"I can see that," Dimitri said. The room was a dining chamber, and the long wooden table was dominated by a hololith displaying Marathon. "I was told surface operations were over."

Jax shook his head. "Winding down, yeah, but not over. 7th Task Force is working mop-up with Captain Dirich's Marines."

Dimitri blinked. "There's a lot of stuff in that sentence that needs clarification, Jax."

"Huh?" Jax looked confused, then smiled. "Oh, you mean the task force stuff."

"Yes. Let's start there."

"Okay! After we got done last week, Manker and me put our heads together and figured out that the Dogs of War are great and all, but we're still aiming a little low."

"Yes, because ten thousand deadly soldiers in power armor is certainly low-balling it."

Jax made a sour face. "Don't be a smartass. 'Sides, it's already done. Each company is gonna be the basis for its own independent task force of troops, some power armored, some not. That way, we can be more places at once. I talked it over with Slavere and we're gonna work with his crusade to supply the ships."

"I fall into a coma for a while and everything changes," Dimitri muttered. "Companies are task forces, and… Jax, have you thought out the politics of getting more soldiers?"

"Yup. I'm a saint, I want troops, so they'll give 'em to me." Jax took a bite from an apple. "This is pretty damn good!"

Dimitri sighed. "I'll start talks with the Munitorium later. Now what's this about Dirich being a captain?"

Jax opened his mouth, but Dirich cut him off. "After the grievous losses suffered by my company during the siege, the Chapter Master saw reason to promote me in place of the late Captain Pontius."

"You have my congratulations."

"And, yet, I do not care."

"Right." Dimitri looked to Tamdrake and Rakatev. "Good to see you two acclimating." They shrugged. "Is there a reason you're so damned determined to keep fighting here _besides_ it being home?"

"No," Rakatev replied.

"Do we need one?" Tamdrake added.

"I suppose not." Dimitri leaned on the table and looked at the hololith. "So, what are we hitting today?"

(' ')

As it was, they were hitting the last significant concentration of Archenemy straggles left on the surface of Marathon, in the snow-capped mountains of the Frug Highlands of the northern continent. The whole of Rakatev and Tamdrake's men were already on the fields outside the mountains, waiting in their convoys of tanks and personnel carriers. The Sons of Marathon waited away from the rest, keeping their own counsel.

There was a loud crack and the commanders arrived on the field. The teleportation left Dimitri light-headed and tipsy. Maybe letting Jax scramble and reassemble his molecules wasn't the best thing to do right out of the hospital…

Rakatev seemed similarly affected, but didn't let it keep him from his duties. "Regiment, form up! Prepare to move out!"

Tamdrake moved away with his assistant and climbed into the turret of _Unstoppable Advance._ "Battle Saint, permission to lead the way?"

"It is not his to give," growled Dirich. The Astartes captain glared at Jax and Dimitri. "We are the Sons of Marathon. We have the honor of this action."

Jax nodded. "Well, by all means. Lead us in."

Dirich grunted and stalked off to his waiting Land Raider. When he was out of earshot, Jax leaned in close and whispered like a schoolboy. " ."

"Jax—"

"**I am inclined to agree, Equerry. Were I not a fellow servant of the God-Emperor, I would not hesitate to give him a taste of my melta."**

Dimitri turned. "Tarrius?"

Tarrius bent at the waist to look down at them, his chassis groaning. **"I hope my presence is acceptable. I find waiting on the ship… trying."**

"I understand," Jax said. "We all get itchy when we wait around. Yer more than welcome to a part in the shit fest."

Sternev grinned. "Anytime, brother!" he shouted and jumped up into Tarrius's chest. The dreadnought reciprocated the gesture, and Sternev ended up in a snow drift ten feet away.

"**Apologies," **Tarrius rumbled, though the harsh fart-bark coming from his speakers betrayed his laughter.

Dimitri sighed. "About time we got on with this, right?"

"Right," Jax said. "Mount up."

Dimitri followed Jax into the nearest Chimera along with Menshaw and Sternev. Tarrius stood outside, ready to march in step with the vehicle. Jax keyed his commlink and gave the order to move out, and the convoy began its slow grind into the mountain passes. The Sons of Marathon led the way with their spearhead of Predators and one Land Raider. Rakatev's regiment followed them in, half going behind the Sons, the other forging its own path along a secondary pass as an infantry escort to the tanks from Tamdrake's armored division.

They didn't make contact for another hour.

(' ')

Incoming fire, hardrounds and las, hammered against the Chimera's outer hull. A heavy bolt smacked through one side and exploded next to Dimitri's boot, shaking him into the here and now.

"Who the—"

"Don't care!" Jax shouted, throwing open the top hatch and bringing his Impaler out to bear. "Sternev, Menshaw, the driver's out! Take the wheel and cut us up to the front of the formation!"

The ratlings nearly knocked Dimitri on his ass scrambling forward over the ammo crates and seats. Casings rained down from above as Jax returned fire.

Pissed off about not being able to see anything, Dimitri dropped the rear ramp and leaned out as the Chimera moved. The pass was clogged with burning vehicles, where heavy ordinance had rained down into the valley, but that was inconsequential. Rakatev's people were good at what they did, and Dirich's battle-brothers were exceptional—none of the wreckage would hold up progress.

Dimitri leaned farther out and looked up the pass, to the peak ahead. Even from half a kilometer out in bad weather, Dimitri could see clearly the defenses laid out by the enemy: artillery, machinegun nests, and two sizable bunkers. It would be hell if it were defended by Astartes or Dogs, but with the ragtag militia here, it was nothing.

"Jax, we ought to just do this on foot!" he shouted back. "We're close enough as is!"

Menshaw whipped around in the driver's seat and looked back at him with his best 'are you gakking nuts?' glare. "Are you gakking nuts?" he asked. "Have you seen the fire coming down out there?"

Dimitri kept his head. "Yes, and it shouldn't be an obstacle."

"Tell you what: get shot with a missile and tell me if it's an obstacle or not."

Jax slipped down out of the turret and reloaded. "Nah," he said, "Dimitri's got a point." He swapped to the main frequency. "Battle Saint to 1st Advance. Get yer boots, boys, we're slogging this one on foot. Form up by platoons."

Dirich cut in immediately. "You are not taking this from me."

"Damn right I ain't," Jax replied. "Yer boys have first rights to the spearhead. Good?"

Dirich signed off. Jax shrugged and moved on. "Rakatev, you got all that?"

"Platoons formed and assigned, sir. Ready when you are."

Jax looked at Dimitri. "We good here?" Dimitri nodded. Jax pulled out his sword. "Okie-dokie, let's rock."

The Dogs of War dismounted their carriers and charged up the pass behind the command squad. Platoons at the periphery fired into the valley walls, picking off the shooters concealed by the rocky slope. Rockets and spikes churned the landscape, and the cacophony kicked up in pitch. Dimitri's audio-pickups did their best to compensate.

Jax led the command squad up and around the Sons of Marathon spearhead, taking a minute to stop at the head of the Land Raider. Captain Dirich was on the vehicle's prow, firing from the hip with his bolter. Ahead, the enemy was charging down out of their fortifications in a solid mass of soldiers. So, they recognized defeat when they saw it.

"Yo, Dirich!" Jax shouted. "You wanna get in on this charge?"

Dirich looked down at the Confederate, ready to retort. It was in that split second that the nearest beastman made it through the Astartes' field of fire and lunged the eight feet up to the captain's position.

Jax aimed and took it down with a burst of spike fire. Dirich didn't seem to notice.

"_You_ will follow _us_ in," he explained. The injured beastman gurgled at his feet. Dirich stomped on its throat, and the gurgling stopped. "Sons of Marathon, advance!"

Dirich's battle brothers roared their approval, and followed him into the fray, bolters chugging.

"After you," Jax muttered, waving his own men forward with a sweep of his sword. "I ain't in no hurry."

The Chaos defense collapsed quickly under the Imperial advance, due largely to the high percentage of beastmen in the defense force. The creatures were physically powerful, to be sure, but lacked the finesse or the determination to grasp the finer points of strategy. In a battle where they outnumbered the Imperials, the creatures' rage would have worked in their favor, but not here. Here, with the numbers about even, they fought like cornered animals, as if each one were cut off from support and gripped by panic.

Jax and Dirich made it to the summit together, and stabbed the last monster at the same moment. When they pulled out, the creature fell apart at the waist.

"Good kill," Jax said.

Dirich merely grunted and pushed ahead into the cave mouth set into the rocky peak. Shrugging, Jax followed him, Dimitri close behind.

The interior was about as dark as one would expect. Dimitri switched on his shoulder lamp and played his Impaler's laser sight across the area. The cave wasn't large, but it ran quite a way into the mountain, bending off out of sight. He listened to his pickups, but nothing came back positive, no dripping water, no ominous wail, no nothing.

"Sounds clear," he said aloud. "Think we ought to blow it and leave?"

"I concur," Dirich said, slinging his bolter and heading back the way they had come. "There is nothing here worth our time."

Dimitri looked at Jax, expecting him to agree, but knew at once that he wouldn't. With his visor retracted, Jax's face was a tight mask of concentration. Something was bothering him. He stared ahead into the darkened tunnel.

"Something is in there," he muttered.

"Yes," Dirich agreed, "the muddied rutting place of these mutant swine."

"Something else, too."

Dirich scoffed. "Push on, then. Check till you have scoured every inch of this mountain. I care not." He walked out the mouth of the cave, forcing Tarrius to step aside. "The Sons of Marathon have achieved their vengeance."

Dimitri ignored him. "What is it, Jax?"

In reply, the Confederate walked forward into the dark and around a corner, out of sight. Dimitri looked back at Sternev and Menshaw.

"Wait here. I'll follow him," he said before walking off.

"Oh, damn, we don't get to go into the deep dark cave full of mutants," said Menshaw. "I'm so damn disappointed."

Tarrius knelt down outside and looked in at them. **"Snark is unbecoming of a warrior, Grumbel."**

"So's being a fridge on stilts," Menshaw shot back.

Tarrius stared at him but didn't speak. Menshaw looked at him. "What?" When Tarrius still didn't speak, he looked at Sternev. "What!"

Sternev shook his head. "That's low, Sarge."

"**Very."**

"Oh for the love of—" Menshaw frowned. "Screw you, gakheads!"

(' ')

Dimitri caught up to Jax just as the Confederate entered the chamber at the heart of the caverns. The walls here were smooth, and while clearly artificial, they revealed no evidence of drilling or other excavation. It was as if someone had simply removed the rock, leaving the chamber in its place.

But Dimitri quickly forgot all that, as the oscillating machine at the center of the chamber drew his attention. It was slow, and formed of concentric rings that rotated free of each other languidly—a perfect gyro. Its purpose and method of power was not readily apparent.

"What is that?" Dimitri asked aloud.

Jax shrugged, said, "Not sure," and started out toward it. Dimitri grabbed his arm.

"Jax, it could be a trap."

"I know it's a trap," Jax said, "Just not fer me."

He nodded to the edges of the room, where the light from the blinking disc at the machine's core faded into a kind of twilight. Dimitri glanced in that direction, and saw at once what Jax meant; forty-two beastmen stood around them, their bodies as silent and still as their cold, doll-black eyes.

"Oh."

"Yup," Jax replied. "Now, stick close. When the shit hits the fan, we'll fight through it."

They made it seven steps before the beastmen made their move. Jax turned and held up his hand at the nearest clutch of the creatures. A blast of white filled the chamber and a dozen mutants vanished. Dimitri opened fire a second later, hosing the enemy with a broad arc of spikes. He was just finishing his first clip when the beastmen got close enough to make ranged weapons useless.

Jax's sword split the tumult, ripping flesh and muscles and bone. Two beastmen hit the ground wailing. Dimitri ducked a club thrust and punched his attacker in the snout, dazing it long enough to jam his bayonet through its throat. He ducked away as it fell, and Jax reached past his head, palm out. Another blast and six more hit the stone.

"Thanks!" Dimitri shouted.

"Damn right, thanks!" Jax shouted back. "That was my last one!"

Dimitri blocked a cleaver the size of a child. "What's that mean?"

Jax grabbed the cleaver-wielder by the shoulder and disemboweled it with his sword. He looked at Dimitri. "Means were screwed, pal!"

The ring machine crackled, sparked, and let out a whine of discharge that culminated in a shockwave of blue force. Dimitri barely kept his balance, and several of the beastmen stumbled against the impact. Jax didn't move. In its wake, the room plunged again into a half-light.

A flash of blue lit the din and three of the beastmen died, their torsos severed cleanly in half. Dimitri caught the cobalt after blur as the energy blade moved through the fog, dissecting their foes with inhuman speed and grace. The mutants, their retaliatory bursts of gunfire consistently late and off-target, howled as they died at the hand of this new combatant.

In the end it was down to the largest of the beastman, a bolter-wielding canine monstrosity. The dog-faced beast fired at the attacker at point blank range. The bolts careened off a shield of blue energy, going wild around the chamber.

The smoke of collected weapons fire swirled aside and revealed the new combatant: a robed, mouthless being, easily twelve feet tall, garbed in elegant pads of golden alloy. A blade of blue emanating from its wrist plunged into the beastman's chest, and the creature howled in pain. The new warrior brought the beastman close to its face, its glowing eyes boring into the mutant's cold stare.

"You are not welcome here," it said. The words reverberated through Dimitri's consciousness, a psychic wave of seething hatred twice as potent as any a human could muster. The depth of the words' intensity disturbed him to his core, and he shivered to feel their weight upon his mind. "Your life is forfeit for this insult. Know as you die that your entire existence, a life borne from wicked intentions, has been but a trivial exercise in wasting breath, and that you shall never have the opportunity to imprint your will upon the universe."

The beastman whimpered, blood frothing at its mouth, as the meaning of the words was burned into its small consciousness. Its legs went weak and it started to collapse, but the taller xeno held it up.

"Do not depart yet, primitive creature, for there is one last thing you must know before I allow you to slip away into death's embrace." The robed warrior leaned in. "I have witnessed the death of billions, and slain the greatest of warriors in my long millennia of life, warriors much greater than you have ever encountered. In short, you were dead ten minutes ago, the instant you chose to set foot in _my_ cavern.

"Now then, you may die."

The energy blade dissipated and the beastman fell to the stone floor with an unceremonious flop. Finished, the xeno warrior stood to its full height, 12 feet 7 inches by Dimitri's visor. Its cloak fell back into place, concealing the gauntlets that had projected its deadly shield and blade, as well as its toned grey muscles.

It leveled its blue gaze with Dimitri.

"Vlasna, Dimitri. A Guardsman. I do not know you."

Then it looked to Jax, and its eyebrows showed an expression of deep sadness.

"Jax, Fredrick. Marine. Served in the original Dogs of War. Killed in action on Tarsonis, 2503. I know you. All too well."

Jax stepped forward and popped his visor, getting a better look at the warrior. "No fucking way. There just ain't no God-damn way." He reached out and touched the alien's face with one finger. "Nanius?"

The Protoss knocked the Confederate's hand aside with a deft flick. "Yes, Jax. Greetings."

Jax let out a yelp and grabbed the alien in a crushing bear hug.

_**Author's Note: **_**Oh, hi there. So, it's been a year. How are you?**

**The above chapter isn't much different from how it was a year ago, except for the fact that it IS NOT a lead-in to an arc in the StarCraft universe (sorry Brain fans, that took away from the overall narrative too much), and there ARE NOT two more chapters after it in said universe.**

**What it IS, actually, is the kickoff for what will be the honed, focused, and bleeding-cool second half of the Confederate. Hopefully people still care enough to read it. If so, review. If not, I'll write and post it anyway. It's about time I finished this thing.  
**

**More to come soon. Promise.  
**


	56. Chapter 56: Seven Force Legion: The List

In the aftermath of the Marathon War, Battle Saint Fredrick Jax reorganized the Dogs of War Legion into seven separate combat units. These 'Task Forces' became the spearheads of his campaign to reclaim the Imperium of Man, defending it from threats of the exterior and the moral and morale degradation of the interior. Supported by his generals and the subtle assistance of his Equerry, Dimitri Vlasna, the Battle Saint launched a campaign like nothing the galaxy had seen in millennia.

The propaganda ministry called his work miraculous, the Emperor's will enacted through his avatar—a systematic overhaul of the Imperial system through faith, fire, and clever speech craft.

Jax simply called it his list.

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 56: Seven Force Legion: Part 1: The List  
_

A low hum filled the stellar observatory, rattling the mosaic of tinted panes set into the ceiling. The observatory hadn't been used to observe stars in nearly three thousand years, not since the previous High Lord owner of the facility had installed the hololithic projector in its center. Still, it was a vast room, and the craftsmanship of its windows made for a perfect refraction of the projector's rays. Secluded, high and away from the rest of the tower, the observatory made for a natural strategium.

Those of the Legion who were still stationed on-planet had come to refer to it as the Doom Dome—after all, most of the ideas that came out of it resulted in a war, one way or another.

Armored fingers toggled the hololith's control panel. The device wound up, rotating on its dais, light flickering. The armored hand smacked it. The lights flickered again. Another two smacks and the hololith whirred healthily to life. Images burst into the ceiling and refracted, holding their pattern after a minute.

Soon, a galaxy of stars burned overhead. Arms of gaseous blowback from thousands of novas stretched into the shadows of the observatory's perimeter, slowly rotating.

Jax flicked the controls to voice command and stepped back. "Show Task Force locations," he said, making sure to speak clearly and without-accent, so that the ancient mechanism could understand him. It had taken months to get the hang of it, but he wouldn't have a servitor in control of his stargazing. He didn't like robots, and he didn't like half-men, so he doubly didn't like half-robot men.

Across the starscape, several runes lit up in red. The markers dragged blue trails across the universe in their wake, winding through the clusters of stars like lines of luminescent thread. The beginnings of a tapestry, Dimitri said. Jax didn't know about any tapestries—in fact, he didn't know any besides the cinnamon roll—but the phrase had a good ring to it.

But what knowledge the Battle Saint lacked in wordplay he more than made up for in warfare theory, and he spent enough time here in the strategium to make that knowledge count. He stood now, hand on the pommel of his sheathed sword, fusion pack grinding its quiet jet whine, watching the galaxy rotate. As he focused on each node, his visor brought up relevant data before his retinas.

Task Force One, General Kellan Thade presiding. In the Cathin Subsector /_annotated histories attached_/, Segmentum Pacificus, cutting its way through a Chaos front /_multiple aliases, Inquisitorial report attached_/. Progress strong. No delays. Status: Proceeding.

Task Force Two, Lord General Harken Manker presiding, General Hawke secondary. The Maelstrom /_astrospheric patterns assessed, details attached_/. Corridor established. Moving inward. Progress according to predictions. Minor ship engagements /_Red Corsair, specifics attached_/. Geller Phalanx holding. Status: Proceeding.

Task Force Three, General Wans Setsui presiding. Bruunhild Subsector, outer Segmentum Solar. Stymying Greenskin advance across fourteen systems /_details and ancillary forces roster attached_/. Status: Proceeding.

Task Force Four, General Mondus Arad presiding. Ghoul Stars. Cleansing lost worlds previously lost to Warp Anomaly 11284 /_details attached_/. Methodical. Encounters logged and submitted. Colonization awaiting approval.

Task Force Five, General Karl Brusak presiding. The Fringe, outer Ultima Segmentum. Forty-two lightyears from Ultramar. Collaboration with Astartes allies positive /_Ultramarines/Chapter Master Ventrus details attached_/. Investigating xenos threat. Status: Proceeding.

Task Force Six, General Ana Tyryr presiding. Damocles Gulf, Ultima Segmentum. Fringes of xenos-claimed space /_Tau Empire, details attached_/. No major contact. Local political maintenance in progress. Status: Awaiting significant engagement.

Task Force Seven, General Ivan Rakatev presiding. Scarus Sector, fringes of the Occulus Terribus /_warp anomaly 'Eye of Terror' details attached_/. Standard reinforcing policies in effect in core systems. Reconstruction and reclamation efforts begun on outlying worlds. Status: Awaiting significant engagement.

Jax blinked the various displays away, leaving just the galaxy at large and its web of status lines. He smiled. It had taken three years since Marathon, a lot of political maneuvering, and not a small amount of impromptu speeches and blessings to make the Seven Force Legion a reality. Seeing it here, even laid out on motes of light in the air around him, was something incredible.

Each light above him was a star, a star with billions of lives depending on it—and him—to keep their lives going. It was a tremendous responsibility. Thankfully, the Battle Saint was blessed with strong shoulders, shoulders that, in another life, had pulled a hydroponics combine up a hill using only a rope.

That he compared the two on equal footing said something about his outlook, and was probably the secret to his staying positive through this all.

One of the motes strobed. Jax blinked the update open on his visor.

/_Urgent astropathic contact_/ the message flashed, the edges of the window strobing with alternating bands of red and white. Jax blinked again, drawing up the transcription, machine-coded into audio directly from the mind of the tower's resident astropath contingent. The voice was synthetic, a poor imitation of the man's real voice, but it got the point across.

/_"Command Authority White, General Kellan Thade reporting. Battle Saint, we've run into a snag…_/

Jax listened, the audio not extending beyond his enclosed helmet. When it was done, he played it over again, and again. When he was sure he had heard right, he popped the seal on his helmet and turned, to the dimunitive figures standing by the chamber door.

"Menshaw, Sternev. Get the guys together, will ya?" he asked.

The Ratlings looked at one another. Menshaw, the older and higher-ranked of the two, stared at Jax. "We jumping, Boss?" he asked.

"Yes," Jax replied, powering down the hololith with the hand not cradling his helmet.

The galaxy disappeared and the panes in the dome above shimmered, forgoing their tint for crystal-clear glass. Light shone in from the golden sky above, through the only clean clouds in the skies of Terra. The Battle Saint's white armor caught the glow, and he suddenly looked every bit the figure he was supposed to be.

"And find Dimitri," he said. "He needs to get out of that damn library once in a while."

((()))

The librarium records chamber smelled like the dust of old books, despite there being not a single tome in the entire hall. Dimitri briefly wondered if this was just a carry-over from the sections of the sub-continental facility that actually housed manual texts, or if it was some kind of byproduct of the seventy-meter datastacks.

The machines were as large as they were varied, hundreds upon hundreds of data engines collected over the history of the Imperium. Successful networking between so many knowledge banks, all with their own specs and quirks, was nearly impossible. In short, to access an engine, you had to get to the engine.

Which is how Dimitri Vlasna came to be using one of the Librarium's shelf skimmers—a hover platform not four feet by four feet at its widest, and fairly unstable to boot. Several times, floating in the aisles between stacks, Dimitri felt the skimmer shift under his weight. He looked down into the depths of the Librarium, thanking the Throne he'd worn his armor today.

He directed the skimmer with a simple brass control toggle, held between two fingers, while his other hand gripped the railing. He moved through the storage chambers, reading off the holoplaques on each stack. 1145: ancient hieroglyphic transcription. 1146: complete catalogue of Scarus Sector insectoids, twenty-three phylums. 1147: collected post-facto reports of Imperial Crusade 'Sabbat Worlds'. 1148: recorded minor heresies, late Thorian Era. 1149: transvaginal disease compilation, Eastern Fringe.

Dimitri sighed. The Imperium was like a hording grandmother. It had everything possible, but nothing you needed. All the data in this entire facility, the largest of its kind in Imperial space, and you'd be hard pressed to find a transcription of the God-Emperor's last words. But an atmospheric breakdown of every moon in the Bumfuck Sector? Yes, that was on hand. In triplicate.

Dimitri toggled forward again. 1162: Imperial Guard defections, M38. 1180: record of xenos species destruction, designation Squats. 1205: variations of Tyranid bioform Carnifex. 1236: structural development data of hive city Necromunda. 1300: Ecclisiarchy confirmed minor miracles, M40. 1350: transcribed genome of Booruvian fruit fly, 20cm sub-species.

"I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to kill myself." Dimitri heard the exasperated words, little realizing it was his voice making them.

1395: grain mineral assessment of Tallarn desert sands. 1416: recorded variations of Cadian eye color in correspondence with warp anomalies. 1451: Battlefleet Solar major engagements logistical breakdown, M34. 1472: recorded human/eldar interactions, non-hostile.

Dimitri flicked back on the lever, bringing the skimmer to a stop. He wriggled the platform closer to the datastack, reading its holoplaque again. "Perfect," he muttered, fishing a slate out of the basket attached to his skimmer.

As he hooked the slate up to the stack and began the download, he heard the faint warble of another skimmer. He leaned back, looked up the aisle, looked down the aisle. Nothing. He checked the slate in his hand, saw that the download was progressing, and set it aside. He looked around again, for the source of the noise. There were no skimmers around—or any moving objects, for that matter—beyond the railcars moving through the gantries meters above him.

No one else had clearance to this level of the Librarium today. The logmaster had assured him of that, and Dimitri had double-checked the schedule himself.

Something was wrong.

Calmly, the Equerry reached down and grasped the grip of his Impaler. He disengaged the mag-clamp with a thought, and the heavy assault weapon came free of his thigh. Dimitri lifted it, one handed, panning up and down the canyon of datastacks, visor searching for targets. His HUD pinged a negative return.

He thought about opening the com and asking for assistance, but there was nothing in the area. Any Librarium security would take too long to get to him, and the nearest Dogs were half a continent away, in the Spire within the Imperial Palace proper. No, this was all on him.

The whirring came closer, the chamber's echo masking its direction of approach. Dimitri leaned against the stack he had idled alongside. Having his back to the wall made more sense than standing out in the open, with four sides to watch at once.

The noise came closer still, until it felt right beside him. Dimitri racked the underslung launcher on his Impaler, priming a rocket grenade. He checked right, checked left, and took a breath. "Okay, let's do this," he muttered.

The whirring stopped. Dimitri held still, listening. Nothing. He began to relax his grip.

The second skimmer dropped from above him. Its hover node roared to life and arrested its fall, so that it was level with Dimitri's own. The Equerry looked, saw a figure in black, and fired.

An armored fist knocked the barrel aside at the last possible minute. His spike careened down the aisle and embedded itself in a datastack, which began sparking. Hopefully no one would need information on extinct species of phallic parasites any time soon.

His shot blocked, Dimitri surged forward and thrust his free hand out, fist balled. Another hand caught his punch, and he found himself face-to-face with the black armored figure.

"Now, is that anyway to treat your biggest supporter?" asked the man.

Dimitri scoffed. "Inquisitor," he said, standing down and clamping his Impaler back in place.

Inquisitor Alexander Tripe removed his helmet and smiled. It was a mirthless expression, one born from a man who found humor rarely and always offbeat. Dimitri had known him for years, ever since he met Jax on Dancer. Since then, their interactions had been sporadic at best. Though instrumental in founding the Dogs of War, Tripe had had little to do with their operations for some time. What he was up to, and why he was doing it, were questions no one seemed to have answers for.

Like Dimitri, Tripe wore a suit of retrofitted CMC power armor, black where Dimitri's was red. The stylized 'I' of the Inquisition was emblazoned across Tripe's chest piece, alongside his name in white stencils. A black cloak fell from his shoulders, holes cut in the back to let his fusion pack vent.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" Dimitri asked, removing his own helm.

"I can't just drop in for a friendly chat?" Tripe asked.

"That pun was dreadful." Dimitri looked at him. "Besides, it's you. You don't do things without reason."

Tripe acknowledged the fact with a brief nod. He gestured at the datastack. "Interested in the Eldar now, are we?"

He had never been on perfectly friendly terms with the man. Not that this was uncommon—Inquisitors were notoriously difficult to like—and Dimitri had never outright hated Tripe. The two had a good working relationship, forged through tenuous bonds of mutual intent. They each wanted to help the Imperium, just in their own ways.

Unfortunately, Tripe's methods involved a tank-load of secrets, secrets that beget more secrets. At the present, Dimitri found it very difficult to trust the man.

"In a way, yes," Dimitri said carefully.

"I like you, Equerry Vlasna. I really do. I've read your mass-astropathic bulletins, the posters and prayers and pict assemblies you broadcast across the galaxy every day. You're a skilled propagandist. You have a true gift for words that can appeal to the masses." The Inquisitor Lord locked eyes with him. "That said, I am a trained agent of His Beneficence's Holy Inquisition. I can smell lies, sort half-truths, and talk circles around daemons. Don't try to feed me a line, Equerry. I neither the time nor the inclination for playing charades with you, especially considering that we are both fighting for the same cause."

Dimitri turned away, checking his dataslate. A download complete rune glowed on its opaque display.

"What do you want to know?" Dimitri asked, unplugging the slate and winding the cord around its body. He tucked it into an ammo pouch and looked back at Tripe. "You want to know what I'm looking up the Eldar for?"

Tripe shook his head. "No thank you. I've tracked all your searches within the Librarium, both hard-copy and pure data, for the past three years. I know exactly what you're planning, the types of species you intend to approach, how you plan to do it, etc."

"It seems you're reliably informed."

"Indeed." Tripe folded his arms across his neo-steel chest piece. "What I don't know is _why_ you think it's a good idea in the first place."

"Is there one?"

"I can think of a few, yes," Tripe replied.

"Do any of these reasons start with 'hair' and end with 'essay'?" Dimitri asked.

"One or two."

"I can't see why," Dimitri muttered. He caught Tripe's look, then said, "Well, I _can_ see why, I just can't believe it myself. Cavorting with daemons? _That's_ heresy. Trying to get along with the other sentient races in our cosmos? Not so much."

"You think we should work with aliens," Tripe said.

Dimitri nodded. "If not work with, at least not work against. The Eldar are a dying people. From what we understand they aren't going to exterminate us any time soon—they don't have the firepower. Still, they're strong enough to hurt us, and every time we run into them it costs lives. Doesn't it seem that at least being non-hostile towards them would be more advantageous?"

Tripe shrugged. "Perhaps. How do you plan to institute this apathetic policy? And it can't involve the Confederate. Even his good charm won't breeze over the heretic shit storm this little plan might cause."

Dimitri turned to the basket of filled dataslates beside him. "I'm still working on that," he admitted.

"See that you do." Tripe unlocked his skimmer platform's toggle and wrenched it back, beginning to drift away. He stopped it a second later and looked back at Dimitri. "Just for my own curiosity, who gave you this idea?"

Dimitri's mouth made a thin smile. "Did someone have to give me it? Couldn't I have just come up with it on my own?"

"Oh, I'm sure you did, but your own little ideas wouldn't get you to spend hours and hours in this complex, searching through useless datastacks for scraps of material." Tripe hovered back, so that their platforms were again nearly touching. "You require backing, Vlasna. Someone who shares your ideals. Otherwise, you'd never go through with anything."

"Is that so?" Dimitri asked.

"Yes, it is. And usually that sympathetic person is the Battle Saint. But not now. I think this is the one endeavor you two don't see eye-to-eye on."

Dimitri held Tripe's glare. "What are you trying to say, Inquisitor?"

Tripe relaxed. "Nothing, really. Just do me a favor and send Nanius my regards."

Dimitri's blood ran cold. He stood there, shocked, as Tripe's platform hovered away down the canyon of stacks, disappearing around a corner and out of sight.

He stood there for a solid minute, brain racing, wondering how Tripe knew what he did, how much that knowledge was, and what the implications of that were. Eventually he noticed the beeping note emanating from his helmet. Sliding it on, Dimitri blinked the com rune active.

"Vlasna," he answered.

"Dimitri! Where the hell are ya?"

"The Librarium, Jax."

A blast of atmospheric wash crackled the line, then solidified again. "Finish up and get over here! We're jumping pronto."

"Jumping?" Dimitri asked, putting his platform into drive. "I didn't schedule a jump for today."

"No, you didn't, but as it turns out I can schedule jumps, too. Y'know, beings I'm the guy who jumps us, and all."

"Of course, Jax."

"Message came in from Task Force One. Thade needs us."

Dimitri sighed. "I'll be right there," he said, and disconnected.

He turned away into the rows of datastacks, heading back toward his shuttle launch and the trip back home.

**Author's Note: And that's that, the first all-new chapter in over a year. Kinda short, I know, but I only worked on it for three days. You have to remember I only decided to continue this story on Wednesday. 57 will be a lot longer, and a lot more fighting. I just wanted to establish the three year time lapse, Dimitri's new goal, and hopefully set the tone for the rest of the story. This arc will do a lot of that.****  
**

**In any case, we're back on-schedule for 44 more weeks of Confederate. Tell me what you think. More shooty-death-kill next week.**

**Later.  
**


	57. Chapter 57: Seven Force Legion: F&F

There are generals that command their troops through daring bravado and unmatchable example, and there are generals that inspire through commonality and professionalism. Kellan Thade liked to think of himself as the latter. Though it was true that an outsider may have seen him as a war hero, for the Cadians under his command he was an everyman—the Lasman's General.

He was heroic because his upbringing made him so. If you lived long enough as a Kasrkin you eventually became a hero of one kind or another. Promotions came by surviving, and surviving came by using your head, heart, and a loaded weapon.

Some days Thade found himself staring into the middle distance, reflecting on how he had stumbled into his position. He always made a point to shake it off and find something productive to do instead. Nothing good came from dwelling on things.

Presently, Thade stood on the bridge of _Corridor's Gate_. A hive of personnel swarmed around the compartment, clambering back and forth on the wrought-iron decking, high above the pits of astrogators and inter-ship communications crew.

An Emperor-class battleship, the _Gate_ and its crew was on extended loan to the Legion from Battlefleet Scarus command. It was an efficient, deadly vessel, run by some of the finest sailors in the Imperium. Thade was honored to command it, though he held no delusions about directing it in a space engagement. That duty he left to the vessel's real commanding officer, Captain Anthiel Remmon.

Remmon stood with him now, looking up through the forward observation pulpit at the planet hanging above them, suspended in the velvet. Antinopolis: First Force's most recent acquisition in its reclamation of the Cathin subsector, and nearly the end of it, if Thade had his way. The subsector had changed hands many times in the past, and not one of those hands had borne the mark of an Aquilla. The orks, then chaos, then the orks, then chaos, back and forth and back and forth. First Force was the only Imperial presence to grace this area of space in three thousand years.

Taking it back had been easy enough. Six major planetary engagement in as many months, as well as two dozen ancillary conflicts on non-essential enemy worlds. Void engagements were few and far between. One of the benefits to fighting over a previously embattled chunk of galaxy was that your opposition didn't have much left to oppose with. So far, the hardest fighting had been here, at Antinopolis.

Ships moved across the view, pinpricks of reflected sunlight and glinting engines on the deep violet of Antinopolis' global ocean. The ships were distant, but they were many. Too many.

"Any new response?" Thade asked.

Remmon shook his head. He wasn't a large man, and didn't have much in the way of hair, but he carried himself well and had a knack for tactics. Still, he looked like a child next to Thade's power armored figure. The comparison didn't seem to affect him. "Nothing. They continue to politely ignore our orders. Their spokesman says it's their divine duty to be here and assist."

Thade sighed. "How much of a nuisance are they, really?"

"Huge," Remmon replied. "Not a one of them knows how to maneuver their own ships, and most of their hulls are holed or compromised in some point or another. Some even have reactors leaking contaminates. They've come against their better sense."

"Some have been following us since Yotun," Thade said. "They tore apart the wreckage after, searching for parts."

"_Hostile_ parts," Remmon corrected. "Chaos metal isn't safe. There's a reason some of those long-time travelers didn't make it this far."

Thade glanced at him. "Those are a lot of deaths to pin solely on scrap enemy steel."

"True, true. Faulty equipment, disease in small holds, cramped living conditions, malnutrition—all are to blame for the pilgrims' death rate. But tainted salvage doesn't help anything." Remmon looked up at him. "But more to the point, how are you going to rectify this situation?"

Thade was about to respond when he heard a thrum building in the air. The vibrations rattled his teeth and he walked back, down from the observation pulpit and onto the main command dais.

Remmon looked. No crewmen stood on the dais. They hadn't needed to be told—after three years of it, they knew what the thrum meant and when to get off the dais. It was the clearest landing zone.

"I'm not going to rectify anything, Remmon," Thade explained. "I'm a soldier. I solve problems by killing people. This is a pilgrim problem, which makes it a faith problem. And for those kinds of problems I try to get expert help."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 57: Seven Force Legion: Part 2: Faith and Fire_

The bridge lit up like the heart of a star. Thade's visor dimmed to dampen the effects; Remmon, and every other man on the bridge, squinted and waved their hands. The servitors still gifted with eyes blurted hazard signals.

The glare faded as quickly as it had come, leaving six figures who had not been there before. The largest of them stepped down from the elevated central dais and marched to Thade, arms held wide. "Kellan, come here!" he rumbled.

Thade accepted the Battle Saint's hug, neo-steel clanking against neo-steel. "Glad to see you, sir," he said.

Jax stood back. "Had to come. Now, what's got you hung up?"

"Right away, sir." Thade turned to Remmon. "Captain, could you escort Father Avotto up to the bridge?"

Remmon nodded, turned on his heel and strode off the command deck. The duty was really beneath a man of his rank, but Remmon didn't complain. He understood that what Thade had to say wasn't for outside ears, even those right below him in his own Task Force.

"Father Avotto?" asked Dimitri. His face was tired. Thade wondered if he had ever seen the man looking refreshed.

Thade popped his neck seal. The heads-up-display was great for micro-managing a planetary invasion from orbit, but the helmet got in the way of personal conversation. He mounted it like the others: face-out, locked to the thigh opposite his Impaler.

"Father Avotto is the spiritual leader of that," he said, pointing at one of the pict screens suspended around the bridge.

"And what is that?" Jax asked, peering.

"A fleet," Thade explained, "Though I use the term very, very loosely. It's really just an assemblage of scrap ships—cargo runners, civilian skiffs, bulk movers, salvage vessels. They're all either over a hundred years old and falling apart or less than a year out of dock, built on disposable blueprints."

"Pilgrims," Dimitri said. "Word of the Legion has gotten out. We're reclaiming the galaxy, we have a saint, and they see this as their place. It means our propaganda is _working_, Thade."

"I see that, Equerry."

"So what's the problem? The other Forces have dealt with this kind of thing. You order a cease and desist and tell them to stay out of the way." Dimitri motioned outside of their huddle. Menshaw tottered over and handed him a dataslate and stylus. The Equerry took to scribbling. "I'm going to scratch out an announcement for the Battle Saint to read. You'll broadcast it fleet-wide and we'll get this out of the way here and now."

Thade took a deep, calming breath. "It isn't as simple as that, I'm afraid," he said.

Dimitri looked up from his slate. "How so?"

Thade motioned to where Remmon had returned, marching onto the deck with a man in tow. Older, grey-haired, the man was dressed in the robes of an Ecclesiarchy priest, at least on top. Dimitri recognized the man's footwear in an instant: standard-issue Guard boots. The sight instantly brought back memories of aching arches and nights spent popping blisters in the nook of a trench wall.

The man halted, slammed his body to attention, and belted, "Battle Saint, sir! Absalom Avotto reporting for duty!"

"Father Avotto," Jax said, meeting the man halfway. "I understand you're the man I ought to talk to."

He looped an arm casually around Avotto's shoulders and led him away, beginning a slow circuit of the bridge. Next to Jax's full size, the old man seemed pitifully small and breakable.

Dimitri looked at Thade. "What is this?"

((()))

"They're veterans," Jax said later, once the command group had retreated into the _Gate_'s briefing chamber.

Dimitri eased himself into one of the chamber's seats and sighed. A hololith in the center of the room projected planet-side combat statistics in a constant carousal. The data flickered as new information was fed into it from the bridge's cogitators. If Dimitri looked between his feet, he could see the bridge through the smoke-stone flooring. It was dark, and all he could make out were the glowing terminals and ghostly faces of their operators. He felt suddenly like some underworld lord, watching the souls under his charge labor in eternity.

He shook the idea aside. "All of them?" he asked.

"Not _all_," Jax said. "Some of them are sons or grandsons of veterans. And then there's the families, kids, grandkids, wives, mothers, fathers—all that."

"But they're led by veterans?"

"Yep." Jax paced the room. He waved his hand through the hololith's projection, blurring the stats for an instant. "Avotto was a colonel with the Urran 147th."

"I've never heard of them," Dimitri said.

"Same, so I asked him." Jax drummed his fingers on the hilt of his sword. "The 147th fought in something called the Gorshan Blitz. Apparently they did one hell of a job, because command gave them homesteading rights. They gave most of the Urran regiments a planet, elected their general for a governor and let them at it. Avotto became a priest."

Dimitri looked at him, at the way the cape fell across his shoulders and down to the floor. His fusion vents were the brightest thing in the room, and served well to backlight him. He looked serious at last. A Battle Saint in flesh, not just name. Dimitri considered that his greatest achievement.

He could also tell the man was bothered.

"What went wrong?" he asked.

Jax shook his head. "Plague. Killed most of the colony. Then aliens came in, raided them, killed most of what was left, and bounced back out before anyone could do a fucking thing."

"Dark Eldar, probably," Dimitri muttered. "A shame."

Jax looked at him. "He told me a few of the other ships' stories, too. None of them were any better. But they all found their way here somehow, on the last scraps of their money." Jax walked over and took a seat next to him. "They made Avotto their unofficial spokesman. No one leads them. But they're all here for the same reason."

"And what's that?"

"To fight back."

Dimitri frowned. "And you know that's impossible, right?"

Jax leaned back in his seat. "Nope. And that's not what I told Avotto, either."

"What did you—"

"I told him to get his ships together. Anything that could land, he'll land where we tell him too. Anyone who can't get down on their own power will get one of Thade's drop centers."

"Jax, we can't use these people. They aren't soldiers. They'll just get in the way."

"Of the greatest fighting force in all of ever?" Jax scoffed. "I think we can shoot over their heads, Dimitri."

"You know what I mean!" Dimitri stood up and pointed at the hololith display. "Do you see these statistics, Jax? Or are they just squiggles to you? We don't have the logistics to field a few thousand more soldiers at the drop of the hat!"

The Battle Saint waved his hand absently. "Avotto will take care of his own logistics. Thade's people can coordinate with him."

"That's your solution?"

"Short term, yeah." Jax stood up and grabbed Dimitri by the shoulder. "Look, buddy. I know this is another one of my 'unconventional strategies and tactics'—"

"That's a phrase," Dimitri muttered.

"Your phrase," Jax said. "And it's right, too. But these people flew lightyears to be here and fight for what they believe. What you said earlier was spot-on: the message is working. People are fed-up of being stuck in a rut. We're giving them something to believe in and they're believin' it in spades. If that belief makes them want to kick-in someone's face, then who are we to stop them?"

Dimitri sighed. "You've beaten me with my own words. What is this world coming to?"

Jax grinned, punched him in the shoulder-guard. "They were good words. That kinda makes it your fault."

"I'll try and drop the quality," Dimitri said.

They stood for a moment, looking at the war-feed scrolling past at their side. Eventually, Jax pointed a thumb in its direction.

"We're getting in on that, right?" he asked.

((()))

Antinopolis's global ocean had been the subject of reams of poetry. Its cascading waves were symbols of change; its tides the inevitability of fate. Its gentle lapping against shores of volcanic sand had served as the stuff of romantic verse for three hundred years, and gotten many a young man serviced in the twilight hours.

That was years ago, however. Today, no one on Antinopolis remembered the poetry, and few remembered the violet waves as anything but a distant thought, a background piece to lives lived in tortured labor as service to their cruel masters.

Antinopolis was the heart of the Cathin subsector, as it had been under the Imperium, as it was under its current lordship. And like always, the planet's impenetrability lay in its hostility. Civilization on Antinopolis existed only in chains of fortress-islands, outcroppings of buttressed defenses growing above the waves like wicked, armored reefs. These island emplacements wept pollutants into the ocean, streaking the violet surf with runnels of thick black runoff. Smoke from weapons factories belched into the atmosphere, choking the sky, clogging the rain and communications.

And jamming auspex arrays from getting a fix on the incoming dropships until it was far too late.

((()))

The ships were brand new: Avenger-pattern Legion gunships, designed for rapid deployment of CMC-armored Dogs from orbit. They dropped out of the cloud cover into a blizzard of anti-aircraft fire, thrusters howling against gravity. Hard shells detonated against their hulls, shearing off reentry plating in showers.

In the lead gunship, Colonel Hale braced himself against the cockpit hatchway. "Why aren't you returning fire?" he shouted.

"Compliance," droned the pilot servitor. Outside, weapon mounts on the Avenger's stubby wings rotated up to speed, their auto-targeting programs locking onto the incoming AA signatures.

Through his helm's display, Hale watched the rest of the gunships do the same. Soon streaks of explosive shells connected the Avengers and their competition. Antiaircraft crews on the island's emplacements were shredded, their weapons ripped apart under the hail of fire.

Satisfied, Hale stepped back into the troop bay as the Avenger finished its landing sequence. His command squad stood as he entered, their faces shielded behind the cross-hatched visors of their CMC helms. Hale felt their looks all the same—the cold, bitter stares of men older than he looking down on his new status.

Rapid promotion was uncommon enough in Cadian military practices, but to go from little more than a Whiteshield to the second-in-command of the entire Task Force in just under three years was unspeakable. Many amongst the officer cadre felt they deserved the promotion before Hale, and that sentiment had filtered down into the rank-and-file, so that now even the men directly under him questioned his place as their leader.

Hale understood this, but refused to acknowledge it. He would make no excuses for his rank, nor offer any common ground to the men he commanded with it. He would lead by example, and by proving that he had been given the job for a reason.

He gave no speech to his men, said no words of reassurance or slipped any wry jokes. But when the ramp dropped and the Dogs of Cadia rushed the battlements of Antinopolis, Hale was the man out in front.

((()))

The main invasion force touched down outside the fortress walls, just ten minutes after Hale's strike tore into the western ramparts. This second landing site was on the eastern side of the island and contained a lot more firepower. In addition to the remaining eight companies of Cadian Dogs, the main force held over six thousand of the newly-minted refugee battalions—the veterans, rookies, and faithful that had flocked to the Battle Saint's banner in this time of need.

They were haggard and pale after months in warp-transit. Their bellies were empty, but their muscles were lean and tense and their wits sharp, bodies and minds drilled into shape under the supervision of their veteran forefathers. They stormed the rock beach with autoguns and old-pattern lasrifles, divided into twelve-man fire teams, each led by a Legion trooper.

And at the head of the formation marched the Battle Saint himself, sword drawn and armor aglow with seemingly endless spiritual energies.

The glow really came from a fusion battery Jax had sucked dry before the drop, but what they did not know could do them no harm, as far as Dimitri was concerned.

The Equerry kept pace with his commander, Impaler in hand. Hard rounds whickered down from the battlements before them, punching into the rock and grimy surf around his boots. Menshaw and Sternev stood before him, one to either side of their life-liege, ready to jump in front of a rocket for Jax. The rest of the command squad, namely Marie Cardigan and her body guard, were still in orbit on the _Gate_. Risking the Battle Saint's one guide home seemed foolish, especially when it could be avoided.

The thought brought something to Dimitri's attention. "Am I not important enough to keep safe?" he asked.

"What?" Jax shouted over the gunfire and roar of the mass of troops at his back. Behind them, more troopships were pouring into the secured LZ, vomiting willing conscripts onto the beach.

A lasbeam burst an outcropping of rock next to Dimitri. He paused in his advance, HUD tracing the trajectory, and let loose a stream of spike fire. The offending emplacement detonated in a puff of smoke.

"Why am I down here, and not up on the ship?" he said. "I'm important. What if I died, Jax?"

"I'd be sad."

"Be serious." Dimitri fell into step again, still firing bursts up into the wall. "What would you do?"

"I'd be sad!" Jax said. "Really! That's the first thing I'd do. But I don't worry about it."

Dimitri looked at him. "And why not?"

"Because," Jax said, ambling over in front of the smaller Dimitri, "I owe you. And I don't let people I owe die when I'm around." The light suffusing his armor pulsed, focusing down into his sword arm and along the adamantium blade. "Cover your eyes."

Dimitri tinted his visor as deeply as it would go. The new soldiers on the beach behind them were about to have their corneas imprinted by Jax's unique signature.

((()))

Delgado Mettarion knew what the tremor meant before the cogitation banks. Ten thousand years of siege warfare had given him an inherent sense of explosions, of their sizes and causes and what they did to the structures they affected.

"Lord, the eastern ramparts have gone silent." One of the slaves, still wearing the remnants of his Imperial technician's uniform, looked around from the master console. Most of his lower jaw was replaced by an augmetic that buzzed haltingly as he spoke. "Imperial forces are inside the facility."

Mettarion nodded, stepping forward. The human threw himself aside to avoid being crushed by the Warsmith's bulk. Standing, the mortal scrambled away from the huge Astartes, only to run into another. He began to stammer an apology but never managed to finish it with his head still attached to his body.

Couv Achal dropped the human's corpse and looked at his liege. "Sir, do we stand and fight?"

Mettarion shook his head. "No, brother. We do not." He pointed at the occulus, showing myriad pict-feeds from all across the fortress. "The Battle Saint has already won. He's brought down our defenses and now this base is as good as his."

"Then what do we do?" Achal asked.

"We delay," Mettarion replied, flicking a switch with a ceramite forefinger. He looked at Achal, saw the younger Iron Warrior's expression. "Nerve gas. Should stymy the Saint's new friends."

Vents set into the command center's columns opened, letting a hiss of invisible fumes into the chamber. Inside of a minute the mortal slaves were keeling over, clutching at lungs now filled with clotting blood, hallucinating nightmares before their eyes.

Mettarion led the way out of the room, his Astartes physiology dissecting and eliminating the toxins systematically, leaving nothing but a faint tingle in the back of his throat.

"Prepare all essential Legion personnel for immediate evacuation," he told his second. "All non-essentials are to stand firm and defend the rift chamber."

Achal nodded. "Yes, lord."

The Warsmith left without another word, marching off down the spiral of corridors to the very base of the facility. Alone, Couv Achal fixed his helm down over his head and drew his bolter. His vox was live and chattering with reports of incoming fire from all across the facility—mortal regiments of cult-soldiers shrieking undercut by the thunderous bass of his own brother-traitors calling compromised and contested sectors.

Methodical till the end, Achal thought. Like them, he would be here until the end, dying as their leader left them. They were just another piece of the strategy.

It didn't bother him in the slightest. A son of Perturbo did not question a plan.

"This is Achal," he said, marching toward the sounds of gunfire. "Kill-squads Altar, Bethal, and Egre rendezvous at junction thirty-two. Hold with flame. Garma, Unddat, and Freall move along corridors six, seven, and eight. Fall back by thirds and reinforce the junction retreat. Anyone else hold along the catwalks and keep anything else off of them. Mortals, meet me in the western wing."

Achal slapped a magazine into his boltgun and racked the slide. The weapon was scarred and painted in alternating bands of yellow and black, the same as the accents on his gunmetal armor. Everything was functional. He would strive to make his death more of the same.

"Iron within," he said.

"Iron without!" the vox roared back.

((()))

Jax led the way through the collapsed curtain wall, flanked by his diminutive bodyguards. Enemy soldiers lay sprawled amongst the rubble, their bodies burned by the blast or crushed in the fallen rubble. Something resembling a torso moaned where it slumped against a pile of brickwork. Menshaw's lightning claws snapped forward and cut down. The moaning stopped.

"Clear," he growled.

Dimitri hauled himself into the opening, followed immediately by the first of the Cadian Dogs and their new auxiliaries. He turned and reached down, grasping Father Avotto's hand to pull him up. The old man was wearing a battered set of shock trooper armor, painted in the navy hues of the Urran regiment he had commanded before retirement.

"Are you well, Father?" Dimitri asked.

"Yes, quite." Avotto adjusted one of straps on his chest. It was a constant habit. The priest caught Dimitri's look and smiled. "It fits a little looser these days. I've lost some meat since the old days."

"I can imagine," Dimitri replied.

Past him, the Battle Saint pointed forward with his sword, indicating the branching tunnels before them. "Fan out by squads and push in. Call out hostile groupings and push them together." He paused, reading his visor. "Dimitri, are you getting this atmo reading?"

The Equerry stopped alongside him, checking. "Elevated toxin levels, eighty-percent over the background norm," he said.

"Yeah." Jax held up his hand, immediately bringing the entire formation to a grinding halt. "New plan," he said. "Anyone not wearing a rebreather or full armor stays here on rear watch. Everybody else, proceed."

Avotto pushed between them. "But why? We're here now. Why can't you use us?"

"It's full of gas, Father," Dimitri replied.

"It can't all be filled." Avotto looked up at him. "Please. We've come so far…"

Jax reached down and placed a hand on the old man's shoulder. "Absalom, I know. It's hard to come this far and not get to fight immediately. I know. But I'm not about to let your men die here if there's a way around it. There'll be other times."

Avotto looked up at Jax, swallowed hard. "Yes, sir."

"Good." Jax smiled. "Now keep your men outside the break. We need a rearguard."

Avotto saluted. "You'll have it, sir!"

As the old man walked away, jumping down onto the beach, Dimitri looked at Jax. "You're getting a lot better."

"I know," Jax replied, grinning. "In another year, what the hell will I need you for?"

Dimitri smiled. "So I can quit, then."

"Didn't say that."

((()))

Achal marched out onto the central battlements to the sound of an approaching fight. He looked west, toward where the enemy strike force had infiltrated the western ramparts. The sounds of gunfire drew nearer, the rip-tear of the Legion's spike rifles mixed with the pathetic fizzle of the warrior cult's las weapons. There was nothing louder, meaning the enemy had targeted the anti-air defenses on their way in. The Dogs would be here any minute.

Achal looked around at his chosen few. All once human, the group had been elevated through a combination of mutagenic toxins and proper daemonic corruption. Mutant shock troops, built for just this kind of heavily-armored infantry fighting.

"Present arms," Achal said.

The mutants hefted their cannons into firing positions. Achal took a spare and racked the bolt, chambering a foot-long explosive shell into the long-barrel. He had worked on the weapon himself, designed it from the ground up. An anti-material rifle, built for breaking the hardest of targets. Targets like the Dogs of War now advancing toward them.

Achal pointed to the sides of the battlements, where the walls were higher and lined with blast plate. The plating was originally there to protect from lateral fragmentation during a siege; now, it would be the perfect defense and concealment.

"Hide," he said, to the simple minds before him.

The mutants scurried into cover, holding their new weapons to their chests. Couv Achal followed them.

((()))

The Dog next to Dimitri caught a bolt in the face. The round crashed through his visor and detonated in his skull, bursting the helmet and most of his shoulders in a fountain of blood. Dimitri jagged to the right as more bolts careened down the passageway, exploding against the walls and pillars. The Dogs ducked into cover and returned fire, sending white-hot spikes back down the hall.

Jax moved behind the pillar across from Dimitri, Impaler held one-handed. In his other hand was the adamantium sword.

"What are they?" Jax shouted.

"I don't know," Dimitri said. "I didn't see them."

"Can you take a look?"

"You're the Battle Saint. You take a look."

"Fine." Jax leaned out and scoped down the hall. "Space Marines. Grey with yellow and black."

Dimitri sighed. "Iron Warriors."

Another Legionnaire hit the stone with a thud. The smell of blood burning from electrical fires filled the air, mixing with the rank stench of gunsmoke.

"Only one way out," Jax said.

"Don't say it," Dimitri prayed.

"Right through them!" The Battle Saint thrust himself into the corridor and dropped into a low run. "Charge!"

((()))

Like most ambushes Hale had lived through—and that was considerably more than most men his age—the enemy tipped their hand mere seconds early. Not enough for the defenders to do anything, but still enough time to realize the situation and cringe before the bullets started flying.

Hale didn't cringe. He ducked, rolled, and avoided the first shot. The round smashed into the stone beside him, passing like a thunderclap and exploding with the power of a small artillery round. As Hale came out of his roll, unstable but decent when one factored in the sheer weight of his CMC armor and the fact that no one should ever try a combat roll in it, he tracked the trajectory and returned fire with a long burst.

He was the first of his strike team to return fire, largely because he was one of the few not dying.

The heavy rounds smacked down around them, so fast and brutal at close range that the soldiers around Hale didn't have time to think before they took hits and fell bleeding to the ground. The Legionnaires were pinned from all angles. These shooters, whoever they were, had high positions along the ramparts. Hale's team was caught in a killbox. They needed to break free now or end up just another bloodstain on this ancient fortress. But with no direct firing-line to the targets, there was no way to break the slaughter.

Unless…

Hale opened his Impaler's rocket launcher and slid one of the propelled charges out into his glove. He activated his comm. "Prime rockets by hand and lob them! Now!"

Smacking the base of the charge, the young Colonel lobbed it overhand, sending it through the air in a neat arc that landed it perfectly in the ambushers' laps. The explosion blew brickwork laterally along the ramparts, spanging off armor and denting helmets. Something squealed high and long, like the feral cry of a pained predator. Hale was suddenly glad he couldn't see his attackers.

The rest of his Legionnaires did the same, priming and throwing their rockets by hand. The incoming slowed and finally stopped. Whatever was left of the enemy was in full rout.

Hale stood up, snapping his tube shut. "Clear center!" he shouted.

"Clear right!"

"Clear left!"

A roar split the air. Hale looked up, and before he knew it was in the fight of his life against an Iron Warrior sergeant.

The Traitor Astartes slammed him into the bricks, chainaxe roaring toward his neck. Hale barely stopped it, his hand wrapped around the murderer's wrist. The Iron Warrior smashed his head into Hale's faceplate, shattering the visor. Shards of armorglas split his forehead. Blood leaked down to pool in his eyes.

"I am four thousand years old, boy," said the tainted warrior. "I have killed more men than you have ever met!"

His arm levered down, the roar of his chainblade mere centimeters from the Cadian's armored collar.

Colonel Imbrin Hale grinned. "I don't doubt it."

He shifted his weight, pulled his head to the side, and let go of the traitor's arm. The chainblade plunged down past him, digging into the stonework with a juttering grind. Hale pushed and rolled, coming up into a crouch, combat knife in hand. Without hesitation, he drove the blade into the traitor's neck, pushing the beast into the ground with all the mass of his armored form behind it.

The Chaos Marine howled, punching behind his back. The blows rocked Hale, dented his neo-steel plating. Something broke in his chest. He pushed harder, levering the blade where it had caught, wedging the traitor's neck open. Blood, blackened and spoilt, wept from the wound like fresh tears of oil.

"But I'm nineteen and a Cadian," Hale hissed, smashing the pommel of his knife, driving the blade between the oversized vertebrae of an Astartes. The traitor kicked and thrashed, but to no avail—these weren't defensive, but more the dying spasms of a corrupted demigod. "And I just killed you."

When he had finally died, Hale got to his feet. The combat knife sizzled in his hand, destroyed by the toxins coursing through the monster's veins. The teenaged hero tossed it onto the steaming corpse.

"Guess I'll go meet some more men," he said.

((()))

Delgado Mettarion preferred machines to men, hard steel to flesh, and exact cogitators to flawed minds. He was practical—his father's son in every way. The scions of Perturbo were not given to fate or fortune. Mettarion lived his life in facts: haves and have nots, real and not real. The fortress around him was a prime example.

That it had such a foul, Chaotic contraption as its beating heart irritated him.

The machine rotated like a gyro on its pedestal, three interlocking rings rotating and shifting in its center. Even the geometry was wrong. None of the rings had definite sizes and continued to grow and shrink at the same time, creating an intense vertigo. Next to it, the sorcerer awaited, a hollow man in a suit of unmanned armor.

Mettarion favored him with an expressionless glare. "On with it," he growled. Behind him, in the corridor outside, the sounds of battle drew nearer.

The Thousand Sons sorcerer set to work, his hands motioning in the air around the gyro machine. Incantations flowed from his helm in the echo-voice of his kind. Rubric Marines. Mettarion simmered in his place. Unmen made from warpstuff. It disgusted him.

Spikes slammed into the ground just outside the chamber door. Mettarion listened calmly. "Are we done?"

The sorcerer stepped aside just as the gyro reached its pinnacle. A blast of red light coursed through the chamber as reality was shorn asunder. The break, contained within the confines of the restraint gyro, pulsed with unreal color.

Mettarion steeled himself and stepped inside. The Thousand Son followed him a moment later.

The Dogs of War arrived seconds after that, just as the warp rift collapsed in on itself and disappeared. The gyro machine slowed, slowed, and finally stopped, just another still object in a fortress full of corpses.

((()))

"The commander got away," Dimitri said, "Though who or what it was still remains to be seen, which isn't entirely good."

They stood on the bridge of the _Corridor's Gate_, conferring in the midst of the usual workday bustle. Thade stood with Dimitri and Jax, the last busying himself with an encrusted bit of pollution still stuck between his fingers.

Thade nodded. "They were Iron Warriors."

"That much we know." Dimitri looked at his slate. "Over forty of them, in fact. All KIA unfortunately. Though according to your campaign notes, no other signs of them have been found throughout the sector."

"That report is accurate," Thade said.

"I don't doubt it," Dimitri replied. "I was just double checking."

Jax looked up at them. "Enough about that. What did you think of Avotto? Yay or nay?"

"Well, the situation was against him, but I like the idea. Yay," Thade said.

He pulled up a force distribution chart on a nearby screen and began going over the details of how the new influx of pilgrims would fit into the existing command structure. Dimitri found himself drifting, unable to focus. His eyes wandered across the bridge, the groups of crewmen, the servitors in their wall sockets, the navigators in their shrouded pits at the fore of the bridge, the other Dogs.

He spotted Captain Remmon speaking with Father Avotto, their motions indicating an animated discussion about something. Dimitri guessed religion by the thick tome Avotto was waving around, ribbon marker flapping.

Next to them stood Hale. The young Colonel was helmetless, a fresh bandage wrapped around his forehead, and streaks of crusted blood ran down his cheeks. Another figure joined him, also in CMC armor, a wet towel held in her hands. She began dabbing at the crust, wiping it away. Hale made no move to resist.

Dimitri was almost surprised. Hale didn't seem like the type to let someone help him, but this was the exception. Marie Cardigan had that effect on people. If she wanted to help, you accepted, no questions asked. Not for the first time, Dimitri was struck by how honest she was.

He was also reminded of how badly he wished he could be honest with her.

((()))

"It's really not that bad," Hale said.

"You fought a Chaos Space Marine, Imbrin." Cardigan rubbed his cheek with a rolled up corner of her towel. "You're lucky to be alive, much less walking."

Hale smiled. It was a thin, fleeting thing, and not something he did often. Cardigan was one of the few people who could bring it out, a fact she was quite proud of.

"You shouldn't do that kind of nonsense," she went on, playing up her emotions obviously and on purpose. "I taught you better than to scrape with Chaos-types!"

Hale's grin widened. Cardigan smiled back, put her towel away. "Looks like I've made a clean spot," she said. "You owe yourself a full shower now. Throne knows it's probably been weeks."

The Teenaged Hero suddenly became somber. "Listen, Marie…"

"She's fine, Imbrin." The Navigator put her hand on his chest. "Everything's fine. You don't have to worry."

Hale looked through her, and she could tell that he was seeing something very different than the _Gate's_ bridge. She knew the look well enough. For all his strength and fighting background, there were some moments that made it painfully clear to Cardigan that Hale was nineteen years old and horribly in love with a girl eighty lightyears away.

"It'll be all right," she said.

Hale nodded, snapping back into the present. "Yes. Of course." He collected himself as best he could. "It's very difficult. I rarely see her, and even when I do there's a real… I don't know, really. She's an astropath. I'm an officer. There's a distance. That probably doesn't make any sense, I know."

Cardigan smiled, this time without humor, and looked across the bridge. She caught Dimitri's eye, just for a moment, before the Equerry turned back to his conversation with the Legion's higher-ups.

"It makes sense," she told Hale. "More than you know."

((()))

The sorcerer led Mettarion deep into the bowels of the ship, through labrythine corridors thick with rank humidity and steam—the bowels of a space-faring predator. The strike cruiser was dense with support struts and its access ways were tight, built to withstand impacts that would shear another ship—even one of twice its tonnage—completely asunder. The vessel was a brawler, meant to scrap head-to-head and come out the stronger.

Its bridge was its heart and brain, and as Mettarion entered, its brain stood to greet him.

"Delgado," said Adamus Luchance. "Well met."

The two traitors embraced, locking their arms in a warrior's grip. When they parted, Mettarion grinned, his pale lips pulling back to reveal jagged teeth as dark as jade.

"Your ship is every bit as impressive as I had heard," he said. "I'd love to pit against it one day."

"_You would be making a mistake."_

Mettarion frowned. "What was that?"

"My ship," Adamus said. He looked vaguely upwards. "Silence, Sandalphon."

The psychic voice receded with a final snarl of its mind-voice. Several of the weaker beings on the bridge cringed at the feeling. Chained beside Adamus's throne, a human female whimpered in quiet.

The War Captain fixed his gaze on Mettarion again, his face unmarked in any way. In any other place, he could have passed for a loyalist. Mettarion wondered not for the first time how the man achieved it.

"Do you have it?" he asked.

"Of course." Mettarion pulled the chain from around his neck and held it out, so that the vial at its midpoint swung like a pendulum before his ally's eyes. "For you, my good brother. The death of a world in such a tiny dose."

Adamus took the vial, carefully, and held it close, watching the clustered microbes within swirling like dust on a dead wind. "For years I've sacrificed worlds in time-consuming rituals that take days," he said. "This is so far beyond that it's shameful."

"Indeed," Mettarion agreed.

The Black Legionnaire snapped the vial into a closed fist and walked back to his throne. "Sandalphon, take us out of reality. I have an appointment to keep."

Mettarion moved to stand at his side. "More warbands flocking to your cause, Adamus?"

"In a way," the War Captian replied. "Though not the kind you would expect."

**Author's Note: Sunday night counts as Saturday, right? No? Well, at least it was out.**

**Long chapter, right? Plenty of shooty? Plenty of story? I think it has a nice balance. And then a cliffhanger, to boot.  
**

**I won't waste much time here. Tell me what you thought.  
**

**Next week we'll be having an interlude from your regularly scheduled Battle Saint to bring you a sidestory about our antagonist-War Captain of Chaos Adamus Luchance. It's like an origin, but with more arena combat. **

**See you then.  
**


	58. Chapter 58: Names

Three wyches stood in an arena of sand so fine the grains could scrape skin from bones. Each was poised for combat, inhumanly lithe bodies relaxed in a honed half-tense, ready to spring forward or flit away on notice measured in fractions of a heartbeat. Their armor curved like blades around only the most essential parts of their bodies, sacrificing absolute protection for mobility, speed, and allure. They were dangerous, the most dangerous in their Kabal.

They held not a candle to the competition.

Adamus Luchance knelt and gathered a palm full of sand from the arena floor. He splashed it on his face, letting the fine powder of crushed bone crease and cut his fair flesh. It stung, mingled with his blood, and when his skin healed a moment later, it trapped the grains within his cheeks. It aggravated his nerves and shot him awake. He sucked air into his super-human lungs and looked skyward, beyond the twisted, phallic gantries of the arena, toward the broken skyline of Commoragh.

The realm of the Dark Eldar, as dank and charming as a polluted womb. Its skies filled with clouds the color of a burst stomach, couched above spires blackened like rotting ribs. The city seemed to come from all directions at once, ignorant of such petty things as dimensions and physical laws. Commoragh was something beyond Chaos—a realm of fear made by those most familiar with its realities.

Adamus looked around the arena, at the ghostly faces of his alien hosts. They roared and screamed obscenities down at him. Clearly, the sight of a Traitor Astartes in their hidden world city was not a welcome one. Adamus knew that well enough, and made double sure to salute his hostess where she sat at the far-end of the arena, in the largest, most lavish of the gallery seats.

She nodded back, with a subtlety unmatched outside her species.

Adamus grinned, and drew his blade. Zereul sang in his grip, ready for the coming fight. Too many weeks in transit, not enough blood. The tip wrenched around in line with the wyches, a lethal dowsing rod attuned to their alien vitae.

"Come," said the War Captain. "Show me something new."

_The Confederate_

_Chapter 58: Names_

Neophyte 322984 flew back, doing his best to fall with the hit, and landed on his back. He sat up, felt that a portion of his rib plate had caved. Pain lit up his body and he stifled a wince. It wouldn't do to let the weakness show, and he had little time to think about it anyway with his opponent rushing him again.

The boy was about his age, maybe three or so years older, and also wore the white robes of an initiate. He was also further along in the augmentations, a fact that each boy knew was the reason for 322984's damaged torso.

322984 got his practice blade up in time, and the two weapons clanged off one another. The boy turned 322984's blade aside and pushed in, landing on him with an elbow jammed in his throat. 322984 choked for air.

Sweat dripped down the other boy's face. "Do you yield?" he asked.

Anger, red and blistering hot, surged through 322984. He twisted, ignoring the pain it caused his damaged chest, and broke the boy's lock. His throat free, he slammed his head forward and broke the boy's nose, turned him away, and slid his own practice blade through the boy's robe, chest, lung, and back.

The boy gasped, whimpered, and died.

322984 had a moment to breathe. Then the Chaplain was on him.

"Neophyte!" he bellowed, cracking 322984 in the temple with the flat of his ceramite gauntlet.

The blow sent him sideways onto the stone floor of the training cage. His vision blurred, blackened. When he regained consciousness, a team of medical servitors were hauling his dead opposite from the chamber. 322984 caught a glimpse of his barefoot under the sheet, twitching with residual spasms. He had time to grin before his concussion took over once more and he slipped away into ink.

((()))

The wyches attacked at once but not as one. Though they came at the same time, and struck toward the same target, none of their movements was coordinated. There was no interplay between them, no unsaid understanding or careful trading of blows. They fought as if each one were the star of their own bloody stage. It was as narcissistic as it was sickeningly beautiful.

If only they could match their hits.

One came in low, striking at his feet with a lengthy halberd. Adamus back stepped, avoiding the strike, and parried a mid-drift blow from a sword. The second wych spun, swinging out with her other weapon—a wickedly curved evisceration kurve. Its barbed flanges snaked across his blade, chiming with each impact.

Adamus stepped into her guard as she spun for a third strike and shouldered her. It was a blow that would have destroyed a human. The wych took it in stride, rolled with the blow, and danced away in a spree of acrobatics.

Her partner swung her halberd again, a rising blow toward his neck. Adamus spun aside, the halberd slicing through his cape, and turned the evasion into a full offensive, lashing out with his sword again and again.

The wych dodged his swings, once, twice, three times. She raised her halberd to block the fourth. Zeruel sliced it in half and continued on, grazing her stomach. She danced away as well, crimson dripping from her pale stomach.

Adamus watched her as she circled, rotating opposite her friend with the sword-and-kurve. He watched them, anticipating their movements, when suddenly he remembered.

_The third wych._

He swung up without looking and caught the sneaking alien as she twirled above him, barb net ready to ensnare his broad form. Zeruel bit deep, slicing clean through her from shoulder to groin. Her body tumbled to the ground in a mess of spilt entrails, bright red on the white sand.

The arena exploded in howling disapproval. Alien bodies writhed in the audience, and the walls of the coliseum convulsed like the palpitating lining of a heart in cardiac arrest. The roar was deafening.

Adamus flicked his sword clean and looked at the two remaining wyches.

"Again," he said.

((()))

"He is a poor choice," said Chaplain Illinus. "I cannot recommend him."

His voice echoed around the chapel, each word loud as a bolter's bark. Illinus was a man of great faith even before his elevation to the ranks of demigods, and the transformation had done nothing to dim his zeal. Fiery oratory and bold statements. This were or they were not. There was little room for gray in the life of an Astartes Chaplain, and even less for a Grey Knight.

Grand Master Luchance looked down at Illinus from his lectern. "He has stellar marks from all other parties, brother."

"Those parties did not see what I saw," Illinus said.

"One of those parties is Stern."

Illinus laughed. "I remember Stern when he was a neophyte himself."

"And he's come quite a way since then," Luchance replied.

"Far enough to dictate our policy when he isn't even in the room?" Illinus scoffed. "Come now, Kato. Let us speak seriously. You cannot be considering the lad."

Luchance glared at him. "I am not given to jokes, brother. Neophyte 322984 has all the qualities we are looking for in a battle-brother. He is strong, fast, intelligent, resourceful. He obeys orders, prays faithfully, and his genetics hold a positive match for implantation. He has passed all the rites without fail. What trepidations have we to worry about?"

Illinus shook his head. "You did not _see_ him, brother."

"Then recreate the moment for me." Luchance stepped down from his lectern and crossed the chapel floor, hands held wide. "Speak your concerns. I would hear them."

"He killed another neophyte during a sparring session."

"Yes, so I see." Luchance gestured to the lectern. "A boy older than him and further augmented, I see. Not the first time this has happened."

Illinus ignored him. "He was prompted to yield and lost control of himself. He fought the boy off and ran him through without hesitation."

"Some would call that a killer instinct," Luchance said.

"And some would call it bloody-minded rage," Illinus countered. "The boy is a poor choice."

Silence passed between the two super humans. Behind them, Jupiter spun on in silence.

Eventually, Luchance took a breath. "I am sorry, brother, but there is too much evidence to the contrary. 322984 is a worthy candidate and we cannot afford to be selective as of late. Too many neophytes are dying during the implantation. We have holes in the companies that need to be filled by compatible bodies. The cycle must continue." The Grand Master rested his hand on his brother's shoulder. "I hope you can understand."

As Luchance left the chapel, Illinus looked up at the mosaic on the ceiling: an image of the God-Emperor, standing beside his loyal sons. For centuries he had come here and looked upon this ceiling, drawing reassurance from its intricacies. Not once had it failed him.

Not once until today.

Outside the chapel, Luchance stood before seven neophytes. He motioned to four of them. "You, report back to your barracks." His ceramite fist indicated the remaining three. "You, follow me. Today begins the first day of your service to the God-Emperor."

He set off down the halls of Titan, and the young warriors fell into step behind him. At the rear of the line, 322984 allowed himself a small smirk of satisfaction.

((()))

The second wych died of overconfidence and blood loss. She came in at chest-height, driving her halberd toward him one-handed. It was bold but not nearly fast enough. Adamus turned her weapon aside and brought his own blade around, slicing flesh and bone, punishing her overconfidence.

The wych spun away from him, the stump of her blade-arm trailing a spout of dark blood. She slumped to the ground, her face a rictus of ecstasy as her life burbled out onto the baking bone sands.

Adamus ignored her and swung around to meet the last of her sisters. Zeruel collided with her kurve and sword, four edges locking together in a grinding tangle, the sounds of their struggle muffled by the roar of the alien crowd.

((()))

"Squad Illinus, with me!"

The drop pod doors blasted free and the Grey Knights were out, advancing in the deceptively nimble crawl of a fully-armored Astartes. They killed as they moved, cutting a swath into the Archenemy clustered before them. Chaplain Illinus broke a daemon's spine with his crozius and sent the creature spiraling back, blood leaking from its shattered body.

Brother Ornar, no less than a body behind the Chaplain, opened up with his wrist-mounted storm bolter, chattering death into the growling horde. His Nemesis halberd sang, slicing down and back out of the daemons, purity seals fluttering off its haft. Thick ichor of a thousand shades splashed and sizzled against his armor, the lifeblood of daemons burning at the touch of the pure.

"Into them!" Illinus bellowed, loosing a beam from his plasma pistol. The bloodletter before him vanished in a haze of vaporized warpstuff. "Ornar, cover my left!"

Ornar responded, blasting precise fire just over Illinus's shoulder guard. Ornar: the name still felt unfamiliar. After two decades of hearing only a number, the newly-bestowed name felt like a raw wound.

The squad pushed its way up a slow rise, killing its way into the horde. Before them, the teaming sea of hell; behind them, the broken remains of their first victims. Ornar looked only forward. Only to what needed to die next. He impaled a gibbering monster on the point of his halberd and brought it down, crushing its head beneath his boot.

Sidelong, across the drop zone, four hundred of their fellow Knights were similarly deployed—a grey front pushing the daemons back. Soon they would create a drop zone eight kilometers in diameter, to be followed down by the Thunderhawks and support vehicles of other Chapters. To their immediate left, scarcely three hundred meters away, Grand Master Luchance led a contingent of Terminators into the fray. The Grand Master's thunder hammer could be heard over the cries of the damnable, even from this distance.

Illinus saw it, too. "Come, brothers! Push!" he shouted.

Squad Illinus roared with him. Their bolters beat the daemons back, and soon they stood at the top of the ridge. There was a momentary pause, as if at the apex of a high leap, where Ornar was on level ground—the end of his push up and the beginning of the push down the other side. For that instant, he had a clear view of the valley before him, and the horizon beyond it.

The sea of the unreal stretched into the distance, a living organ of pulsating, pestilent flesh-things. The sky wept red, and fire under lit the clouds, turning the surface of the planet into a baking oven. In the distance, a great city lay in ruin, besieged by traitors. High-speed winds buffeted the valley, dense with the radioactive aftereffects of the Imperial Guard's last-ditch attempt to deny the enemy its victory.

Cadia was burning, Ornar realized. The Archenemy was winning. The Imperium would fall.

He was sure of it.

For the first time in his life, he wondered if it was a bad thing.

And then before he could think about it further he was down the other side and into the fray once more.

A roar split the air. Ornar looked up, past the dying plaguling in his grip, to see the avatar that had bellowed.

The bloodthirster strode toward them, stepping over the hordes of its lesser kin. Its whip dragged behind it, slicing blood from the backs of its subjects. The monster's axe swung beside it. Its bull-like head swiveled round, eyes locking with Ornar across the battlefield.

Illinus's voice boomed. "In war and abandonment, be thou my shield and my steed!"

The Cry for the Holocaust. Ornar joined in with the rest of the squad, their voices filling the inter-squad vox net.

"Be thou retribution, and I shall be Your hand in the darkness!"

Energy built up around Squad Illinus, faith made physical flame. It crackled across the ceramite plating of their armor, burned along the bodies of their weapons. The purity seals across Ornar's body turned to ash in the purging flame. Fire washed the ground beneath their feet.

"Light from the shadows, death from the dying, vengeance from the lost!"

The bloodthirster reared above them, axe held up against the burning sky. Beneath it, Chaplain Illinus charged up, crozius in front of him. The energy of the Holocaust built around his body, each member of the squad feeding their psychic forces into him.

"And from the void shall rise only the pure!" he roared, swinging up to meet the bloodthirster.

The Holocaust ignited, scouring the land in front of Illinus. The light was brilliant, the purging flame of the God-Emperor made manifest. It rolled across the land before Squad Illinus, scouring the ground and burning away the taint of Chaos. It was an impressive display of the Grey Knights' inborn talents, the gift that had made them the Imperium's final word against the Archenemy for ten thousand years.

It wasn't enough.

It wasn't nearly enough.

The last thing Ornar saw before the bloodthirster's hoof broke his spine was Chaplain Illinus spinning through the air, his body halved at the waist, still smoldering with the flame of his dying faith.

((()))

Zeruel hissed through the air, kissed flesh, drank blood, and continued on. Behind it, the last wych's body slumped to the ground, blood spraying from the stump of her neck.

Adamus stood back from his kill and looked up, across the arena and past the gantries of aliens braying their disgust that an outsider had killed three of their best warriors so easily. He focused on the figure at the end of the arena poised in her private viewing box like a spectral dancer, surrounded by her close retinue and private guards.

The War Captain sheathed his daemon blade. "Will you see me now?" he asked, the sound of his voice not reaching beyond the shrill of the crowd.

It didn't need to. The alien mistress stood and raised her hands. The noise of the crowd dropped away instantly—even raiders knew not to speak above their leader.

"The display is ended," she said, her voice carrying across the arena.

No further instruction was needed. The dark eldar stood and filed away, disappearing from the gantries like spirits. Above, the mistress's bodyguards vanished as well. Soon they were alone.

"Very well," she said, with no need to raise her voice. "Speak."

Adamus grinned. "I was hoping for a more private venue."

The alien spread her arms wide. "I see no one else, Legionnaire. A space shared by two is always private no matter the size."

"You have more clout than I remember," he said, stepping across the sands toward her. His boot tracked through a pool of wych blood, and left dark imprints behind him.

"We were associated a long time ago, Adamus."

"You were just leading raids then," he agreed.

The eldar shrugged. "That was then. Now I control all of this."

"All of the arena?" Adamus pressed.

"All of Commoragh," she replied. "All of it, from every hidden pocket dimension to the very jagged spires themselves. It is mine."

"And all its inhabitants call you master?"

"All those who matter, at least in public." She leaned against the banister and looked down at him; her body swathed in dark robes and contoured armor. Sinuous cables fed into the base of her neck and ran throughout one side of her skull, their black forms visible like worms beneath the pale of her face. They pulsated, shooting streams of narcotics into her brain. "I'm certain they hate me in private, conspiring and plotting my downfall."

Adamus frowned. "Will they succeed?"

Her laughter was hollow, painful. "Yes. I would not expect you to understand, but there is a saying in Commoragh: power belongs to the hungry."

"I'll assume that something was lost in the translation."

"The limit of your Gothic," she scoffed. "It means very simply that no one being is on top for long in this infinite city. Someone younger, stronger, smarter, or luckier will always come along and snatch it away. Or just give it back to Vect."

"I thought you would have killed him to get here."

The laughter came again. "No one kills Asdrubael Vect. You wrest power from him, yes, but no one tries to kill the old creature. To do so is a death sentence. You rule under his nose, with his power, but you do not kill him."

"I see," Adamus said.

"No, you do not." With a deft motion, she flipped airborne, corkscrewed in a flutter of robes and landed before him, sword in hand.

Adamus drew just in time, blocking and countering her thrust with a full-side kick. She rolled with the impact, slipped over his leg, and swung up toward his side. He blocked, locked her blade to his twisted pommel, and pulled her close.

"You still have your speed," he said.

"And you still have a clean face," she replied. "How is it a man so snared by Chaos can look so pure?"

Adamus ignored her. "You said that everyone on top in Commoragh dies eventually, but for your brief reign you have all the power imaginable."

"I suppose."

"Then what do you plan to do with that power, Mezhriin? Use it to squeeze your anthill tighter and tighter until the kabals you've united slip out through your fingers and slit your wrists? And then what, as your power bleeds out of you? You squeeze tighter, grip failing, until your killers dance on your corpse and restart the cycle?"

Mezhriin smirked up at him. "Isn't that inevitable?"

She broke the guard, spun back and dived in again, sliding down and around him. He parried her along and blocked as she sprang up, twisting over him, blade flashing in the sickly light. She landed and stared at him, sword suddenly still at her side, as if the exchange of blows hadn't happened.

"No," Adamus said simply. "Not if you take up a cause."

"You speak of charity?" she asked, dryly.

"I speak of purpose. Of something beyond the constant thieving and senseless butchering your kind has been caught in for eons."

"Not senseless. We fight for ourselves, for pleasure and entertainment. Self-centered. The truest reason of all." The self-styled leader of the forgotten race turned on him. "Perhaps to goal-oriented failures like your fellow Traitor Astartes, that is hard to understand."

Now it was Adamus's turn to attack. Her words stung but his actions had no malice in them. The blows were conversational, as were here own—conveying the severity of their conversation. She blocked, and he turned the blade aside, plunging Zeruel forward with lightning speed.

He stopped the blade just a millisecond late, then pulled it back.

A drop of blood slid down her stomach. The blow was landed, his point made.

She stared up at him for a long time. "Tell me your scheme," she said finally.

Adamus Luchance sheathed his squirming blade.

"Very well," he said, and did.

((()))

"Why not kill him?" the voice was unnaturally deep and smelled of the warp.

The reply was softer, but only by comparison. It was still the gruff rumble of an Astartes. "There are plans to consider."

"Plans," the voice spat the word like bile. "What use have you for plans?"

"I would not expect you to understand, you who can fail time and again with an infinite supply of second attempts. Us mortals must work on certainties, and certainties require plans."

"You speak too much, Despoiler."

Brother Ornar forced his body to move, but his armor disagreed. The power pack was disconnected. He railed against the inert mass.

Something sliced through his neckline, clipping his skin and letting blood leak down around his collar. A hand raked across his helm and pulled it free. A flood of light splashed across Ornar's face, blinding him momentarily. When his vision cleared it was a vista of the Cadian sky that he found, a fire-red scar littered with the falling wrecks of ships. Fighters screamed overhead—and they did not look Imperial.

Cadia had fallen. For the first time since he was a child deep within the bowels of a black ship, Brother Ornar felt helpless.

"What is your name?" asked the monster above him.

Ornar spat on him. The film of blood burned the creature's skin.

The creature ignored him. "That was rude. Thankfully, I can read." He raked a talon across the gothic print along the armor's collar. "'Brother Ornar'. Not even a Justicar yet. No matter. We've caught bigger prey as well. Yev'i'kitzy'n?"

Behind him, a bloodthirster lifted Grand Master Luchance in one hand. The pennants hanging from Luchance's were gone, blackened in the fire that had engulfed him. The greater daemon dropped him on the ground next to Ornar. The Grand Master was alive, but only barely.

Ornar roared. Above him, his captor smiled.

"Anger. Good. You'll need that for your change," said Abaddon the Despoiler. He tapped Ornar's name plate again. "We'll start with this."

**Author's Note: And that was the first interlude chapter. We'll be doing this every so often, to help show Adamus's side of things as he gathers allies of his own. I thought it important to go over his background a little bit. More of that will be revealed as well.**

**There have been a lot of reviews mentioning forgotten pieces of the story, and where they will appear. All of those will all be included at some point, from the Kroot Shaper to Amaranth Vilverin.  
**

**Even _Green is Best_ will be finished, albeit with a truncated second-arc.  
**

**Also, I'm now running a Grey Knights army on table-top. Their new codex got me, even with all the broken-ass fluff. Running their new uber HQ is just too much fun. Paladins as troop choices? Yespleasethanks.  
**

**Next week we'll be back to our regularly scheduled Dogs. Thanks for reading.  
**


End file.
